Early
by Bainaku
Summary: Haruka and Michiru learn to live, love, and fight together. Set before their meeting with the Inner Senshi, this story shamelessly indicates a pairing between the protagonists. Please critique and comment!  Updated: 8/27/10!
1. Chapter 1

**Warning**: This story involves two women together. If it doesn't tickle your fancy, I wouldn't suggest reading further. Thank you!

**Disclaimer**: I do not own the BSSM franchise. It belongs to the goddess Takeuchi Naoko.

**Suggestions**: Try the veal! No: on a serious note, this story can be read as a companion piece to my other fic, _Together_, or it can stand alone. If you intend to consider them as complimenting each other, however, you should read _Together _first. The events of this fic occur approximately two months following those of the other, give or take a mangy Saturday.

**Early**

The other woman sat up next to her in bed. She trembled in the darkness; the shadow of sweat-soaked curls fell over her eyes. Her pale fingers twisted the sheets, pale shafts of moonlight tipped in crescents of quartz, and the throb of her heart ran like the back leg of a rabbit between the walls of the small room.

Haruka, eclipsed from sleep this night and sharp-eyed as a result, propped herself sideways on her elbow and fumbled with her other hand to clear the hair from her face. She was unused to company in her bed and even the flesh of her brow was riddled with the angry rise of startled goosebumps. "A nightmare?" she asked, and glanced at the digital clock perched on her bedside table. It read 3:56 AM.

Michiru said nothing. The tears rimming her eyes winked in the low blue glow of the clock, a diamond-dusting of misery; the azure silhouette of her face, so morose, was like dying. Haruka sat up too.

For several minutes silence stretched between them, not so much companionable as understanding. Michiru cried the way a faucet drips, slow and sporadic and somehow methodical, with no complaints otherwise but the occasional tremble of a lip and the hitching torment of an inhale. Haruka comforted her by being there, her hands in her lap, her elbow brushing the pale soldier's own, the faintest and still most certain of reassurances.

There were sometimes points in these long nights when, following combat, they held one another and felt their burden bearing down upon them with such pervasive intensity that they buckled under it and sobbed, their limbs afire and their hearts aching. There were times when they patched each other's wounds and worries by embracing, by stealing hot glances over dinner, by calling late in the night—and there were times when the world ran cold and they sat in their separate agonies, unreachable and distant. It had been almost four months since their first battle in the garage. Haruka had learned quickly when to reach for Michiru and when to leave her alone. Patiently, faithfully, she waited.

This late evening marked the first that Michiru had spent the night, and it was only because they had both been too exhausted and too cut up following the day's battle to drive the paler woman back to her apartment. Haruka had scarcely been able to steer the motorcycle this far; Michiru had almost fallen off twice, her arms loose and wobbly in their clasp of Haruka's ribs. They bled on the seat and Haruka dripped her grim sanguine victory over the handlebars. Even in normal clothing, they knew, their injuries were obvious, and those civilians they did encounter before they managed to get well away from the public eye gawped at them in shock. Because the taller soldier's building was closer than Michiru's and they could not afford to continue driving in daylight, they had come here, and they had walked up the stairs shoulder to leaning shoulder. Once inside, Haruka remembered, they had undressed one another, showered separately; she could summon no memory of dinner.

She _did _recall preparing the futon for the two of them, and the slow, exhausted shift of Michiru's body to hers beneath the fresh sheets. The other woman had clung to her as she fell asleep; Haruka had a recollection of smoothing her hair in the gathering darkness, keeping her tucked close until Michiru's breathing was easy and slow and sweetly sinful, breasts brushing Haruka's with every innocent inhale. Despite her own fatigue and best efforts in the attempts, Haruka herself had been—and apparently still was—unable to sleep. Now she was insomniacally glad, and she watched her lover from the corner of one slanted green-glass eye, concerned but tacit.

Michiru at last chased the tears away with her fingers, smudging them into salty smears over her cheeks. Haruka looked at the clock again and saw that it now demonstrated 4:07 AM. Michiru's moment of weakness had persisted a little over ten minutes. Feeling a stab of admiration for her partner's strength, the blonde woman slid from the futon, rose, and padded into the bathroom. She gave the small shower stall a furtive, guilty glance. Just this evening she had wept out her own anxieties there, crushing the soap in her strong fingers, her forehead pressed to the slick wall, blood and grit and antibacterial suds singing down into the gurgling drain. Her shower had taken twenty minutes, and even then she had thrust her face into the towel to hide her last few furious tears. Her cries, muffled by the cloth, had been reminiscent of a manual transmission's grinding gears.

She flicked on the bathroom light and the porcelain tile of the shower stall went up in a cataclysmic flash of white. She squinted against the harshness and turned to the mirror. The face she saw in the reflective surface was a sunset's horizon of bruises, one blonde eyebrow split open, the stern lower lip slightly swollen and puffy. Her throat was covered in orange-purple tracks laid by the lucky knuckles of the enemy; they throbbed with every breath and made her chest sear when she swallowed. She probed them gingerly, frowning—they were going to be hard to hide for school.

Shifting her attention from them, she turned on the tap and plucked a small cup from the stack next to the sink, positioning it beneath the cold gush. Once the cup was full, she set it temporarily to the side and swung her hand into the stream of water, cupping a palmful. She studied her reflection in that too for a moment, then tipped her fingers to her lips and swished the mouthful around with a wince, tasting copper, feeling grit splash against her teeth. She leaned over and spat in the sink, enraptured—but not surprised—by the crimson flecks speckling the basin's curves. She repeated the process twice more and gargled once for good measure, satisfied with her efforts when the blood in the water was only a hair-thin pinkish thread running round the drain.

She washed her face too, twitching away from her own touch as her fingers traced the bruises, the wounds, the reminders of a strange life carried out between sunset and sunrise in a damnable dark blue miniskirt. When she was done she picked up the cup of water and trotted quietly back out into the bedroom, easing down onto her knees next to Michiru's side of the futon to produce her offering. She had never had someone with her this late, much less in this state. She thought—hoped—she was being a good host.

The other woman took the cup with a grateful murmur and sipped at it, looking at Haruka sidelong in the darkness, one warrior's gaze hedging to another. Haruka knew she was deciding whether to divulge her nightmare.

When the silhouette of liquid in the cup said it was half-empty and—with another glance to confirm—the clock on the table read 4:21 AM, Michiru murmured, "Do you think they feel anything but pain?"

"Who?" Haruka asked. She thought she already knew. Putting her palms against the hardwood floor, which was cold but obsessively clean, she rocked backward off her knees and sat cross-legged, watching her partner.

"The enemies. The monsters that attack the people we scout, or grow from them." Michiru paused. Each aquamarine eyelash was a curved spire in the glow of the clock, and Haruka thought that she was beautiful even ensnared in her own personal anguish. She reached to take the woman's hand and held it in her own, feeling its smallness, its clenched warmth. Michiru smiled at her and continued a little more easily, "Do they have lives? Are they separate from the people that draw them close and spawn them, Haruka?"

"I think they're the worst parts of people." Haruka tasted the words in her mouth and realized they were like cotton. She'd given the matter a bit of thought herself, turned over the concept of monsters and creeping crawling things in the small, dim moments before sleep some nights. To a point, it fascinated her: that such things could be real, and that she was among those responsible for fighting them, for putting them back in the dark where they belonged.

She felt Michiru's hand tense a little in hers and ventured, "But that's not really what you want to know, is it? Whether they just know pain or not, I mean."

Michiru looked at her sharply, dropping her eyes in the next instant. "No," she admitted. There was glass in her voice, cracked and shimmering and close to a final shatter.

Haruka lifted the pale hand to her mouth to kiss it. Michiru looked at her in a mix of surprise and abrupt flattery. Drawing her other hand up to cup her partner's smaller palm between her own, the blonde woman licked her lips—she could taste Michiru there, sweet and faint—and allowed, "You want to know if destroying them makes you a murderer."

Silence again. Michiru's nails bit into Haruka's lifeline, seeking comfort and answers. Another blue minute went by on the clock, a small flicker of time lost, and the dark-haired soldier said at length, "They scream when they die."

It was Haruka's turn to say nothing. She waited again, intent.

Eventually a small shurring sound in the room slipped between them. It was the air conditioning coming on, and Haruka blinked. Her nighteyes had come and she could see the outline of the dresser in the corner of the room, Michiru's bra hanging from one of its knobs in the manner of a tattered flag. Shifting up and forward onto her knees again, she nudged Michiru aside on the futon so she was able to crawl back inside its low warmth. She jerked the sheets over them and rested breast to breast with the other woman, her chin curved protectively over the green head of curls, her throat an arched column of muscle and grace. When they were still again, hands tucked between them, and she was sure Michiru had no other contribution, the blonde soldier spoke once more.

"They scream because it hurts. Of course it hurts. Of course they die. Of course we kill them. Every night, we kill them." Her voice came out harsher than she wanted and she felt Michiru cringe against her. Frowning, she softened her words in her head and went on, hoping they emerged with more an air of compassion, "But they don't have lives, not the way you and I do. They come alive to kill, and that's all."

"We kill too, Haruka." Michiru's lips brushed her throat. Haruka felt the blood rise in her cheeks and chest and wanted, with delicious immediacy, to pin her lover and make time stop, this war of worlds be damned. Michiru would let her, and Michiru would like it. They had been waiting for what felt like a long time for one another, a dance of destiny and twisted bedsheets.

But a distraction was not what her lover needed right now, and Haruka knew that. She forced the thought from her mind and whispered instead, "We're murderers—and more." She ran her fingers down the opposing spine, feeling the faint scars there from their first meeting, hissing despite herself at the faint arch Michiru made up into her touch.

"You make it sound sexy," Michiru whispered back accusingly. Laughter lurked in her misery, shafts of sunlight in the dark belfry of a warrior's heart. Haruka smiled and pressed her lips to her lover's brow. Michiru was a brave one.

"I think it's just my natural charisma." She thought about it and went on seriously, "No. I mean, we were something else once. We still are by day. We're more—more than they are or ever were. We have to believe that." She wanted to sigh and stifled the urge. Sighing was a fluttery forebear of defeat. "You have your violin, your swimming. I have my racing. We do that because we're human." There was a heaviness in her own words that she marveled at and hated, because she knew it was a blossom of tears waiting to open again, a flower of sorrow, and tightly furled bloom of anxiety. Swallowing it, she finished, "We only kill now because we're soldiers. One day we'll be able to stop."

Michiru's mouth curled against Haruka's collarbone and instantly the blonde woman knew she'd said something wrong. She loathed herself for it and for not knowing what it was, and especially for not having the foresight to keep her words to herself.

"How do you know that?" Michiru was adamant in voice and vehemently hot in body. She wriggled against Haruka, their knees knocking together in a rhapsody of delicious, awkward touch. "What if they were like us too, once?" The hair on the back of Haruka's neck prickled at both the thought and the raw fear in her companion's voice. "What if we're like them eventually? You know how I mean. Someone else's mess to clean up. Something other soldiers will have to fight in the dark."

She reached up and settled a cool hand in the short, fine hairs at the base of Haruka's skull, only just able to gain purchase on them with a gentle clench of her fingers. Her nails grazed through the low well of flesh in the center of the opposing soldier's nape, and Haruka shuddered, unable to help it.

"Like them?" she echoed. She licked her lips again, partly because she could feel Michiru rubbing against her all the way down and partly because she was sincerely considering the question. Michiru was naked. Haruka was nearly so. To steel herself, she looked at the clock. 4:34 AM, the glacial numbers on the hateful little box told her. She wished they were ice cubes so she could hold them against her burning cheeks.

"Like them," Michiru insisted, and shifted a knee up between Haruka's own. She did it slowly.

Clenching her jaw until it throbbed hard enough to keep her sane, Haruka managed at last, "People turn into monsters all the time. That's part of the reason we have to fight—to stop them once they've gone down that path." She drew in a shaking breath and finished, "But they turn into monsters because they have nothing to keep them from it. We aren't like that, Michiru. We have one another. You won't let me." Her words were almost ragged, and her lover's knee edged higher as though in encouragement. "I won't let you. I promise."

Michiru paused, and Haruka wanted to die. Her heart drummed a dream on the backs of her ribs and she felt her lover against her through a rising haze of heat. The pad of the paler woman's thumb teased its way up behind one of Haruka's ears, a careful, thoughtful caress that wobbled a little. Michiru's eyes were shining again in the glow of the clock, her expression that of one who has been reassured and is grateful, and she showed Haruka just how much she appreciated the effort by leaning up to kiss her. The embrace was a teasing, nibbling thing that smelled of salt but tasted sweet, and when Michiru pulled back, Haruka followed her. They wrestled gently, carefully; Haruka let Michiru end on top. The sheets slithered from the woman's body and she was beautiful, tinged blue by time and bruises all, such that the blonde soldier choked on her breath and reached up in something like reverence to hold her.

"Monsters aside, maybe we can let each other get a little wild sometimes," Michiru suggested. She cupped Haruka's cheek and it became an invitation spun with a playful grin, the break of sunlight through storms. Her lover accepted it and wrapped her arms around Michiru to draw them together, the sudden strength in her limbs and the flush in her cheeks fierce enough to dry the remaining tears between them. Inexplicably, there was laughter. Unwaveringly, there was love.

By 4:55 AM, they were twined and sleeping.

**Notes**: After a long hibernation, I've come rumblingly awake again! First off, I'm not sure whether to continue this story or not. I could, and easily—I have an idea of where I want it to go. But do you, dear readers, like it enough to read more? Critique it, comment on it, and let me know! As always, I appreciate any and all feedback, and I especially adore fluffy hats. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Lastly, is a T rating okay for this, or should it be M? I'm going with the former, but will change it if necessary.

—Bainaku


	2. Chapter 2

**Warning: **This story involves two women together. If you're not fond of such things, don't read anything else. Thank you!

**Disclaimer**: I do not own the BSSM franchise. It belongs to the goddess Takeuchi Naoko.

**Morning**

She woke and felt the sun on her face. Eyes closed, she groped with one hand for the curtain pull and found flesh that was not her own instead. The memories of the previous evening slipped back into her consciousness like notes of a fair melody, and Michiru turned them over in her own private thoughts and smiled.

She could soon stand the press of light on her cheeks no longer. Stretching, she sat up and kept the world at bay a few moments more by hiding behind her eyelids, safe in the cool cavern of her personal construction. When Haruka's arm fell into her lap and the other woman moaned her protest, the fairer soldier opened her eyes, watching her in faint anxiety. Ensnared by a slumber made deep by what Michiru assumed was little sleep and nightly play, however, Haruka settled and fell quiet, her wild forelocks thrust over her eyes, the bare expanse of her spine burnished and brilliant in the shuttered spots of light flecked through the blinds. Releasing a soft breath that sang desire and admiration, Michiru traced what she could see with careful fingers.

It was hard to look at something so beautiful all at once and realize it belonged to her, so Michiru averted her eyes from her lover at first. She turned her head and examined the room instead. She had seen it once or twice before, a quick, cursory glance while Haruka had gathered wallet and watch. Now she took her time and let her eyes fall in languorous curiosity over the small clock on the bedside table, the little digital teeth of its numbers glowing blue. She flicked her gaze up along the wall, where nothing hung but a sketch Michiru had done some weeks ago of clam and conch shells on the beach. The closet was open, and the woman squinted, biting her lip in surprise. Was that a dress in there? It was! Bright yellow, with a sash—she had never seen Haruka wear it and thought, mouth curving upward in amusement and quiet knowing, that she probably never _would_ get that particular opportunity.

She found the bureau next and blushed upon discovering her bra hanging from one of its polished knobs. Cupping the sheets to the breasts said bra normally kept cloistered, Michiru edged down along the ridge of the futon and, when she was close enough, leaned over to unhook her garment from its brazen perch. Lifting it to her face with one hand, the other still hoisting the sheets upright, she sniffed it. It smelled like blood, like dark things, and she tossed it away immediately, shivering.

To prevent her mind from tracking backward to the previous day's battle, the fair soldier studied the bookcase next to the bureau. It had a weathered look about it, the corners stubbed and scratched, one shelf bowing in the center. The books that lined it appeared similarly dog-eared and faded; most of them, Michiru was not surprised to note, were automotive manuals. She brushed a fingertip over the heavily creased spines and read their titles, some of which were in English. Others said things she could not read, and that startled her. She struggled through a few in Italian before giving up, and wondered if Haruka spoke the languages of her books or just collected them for the sake of a hidden packrat's heart.

There were other things on the shelves too. Some made no real sense to Michiru, who had only a vague idea about the workings—inner or outer—of cars and other automobiles. She knew she was looking at models, though she had trouble envisioning Haruka with the patience to painstakingly paint the tiny replicas of the machines she so often coaxed to victory on international speedways. There was a trophy, small and silver and covered in a fine sheen of dust, that said something in Italian Michiru could not read. Shells dotted otherwise empty spaces between books and icons, and the pale woman reached out a finger to touch one gingerly. They had found it together, a broken oyster's home that curved and pinched at the end like a fox hunter's horn. Though it was barely large enough to cover her ear, Haruka had pressed it there and said to Michiru, "I can hear the waves in it."

Unbeknownst to Michiru, Haruka had apparently liked the shell enough to bring it home. It was polished to a high mirror shine on the shelf—unlike the trophy, it sported no overcoat of dust. The subdued, muddy, and mottled rainbows of the shell's interior winked up at her, a mesh of pyrite-shale shimmer, and she smiled again because she remembered what Haruka had said next, her thumb brushing the sand away: "It reminds me of you." And here it was, protected and safe in the taller soldier's bedroom, lovingly tended: just like the real thing.

Michiru thought she was ready. Drawing in a breath, she turned her head back down and sideways and looked at Haruka, who was still sleeping. The other woman's lips fell apart a little, though she didn't snore. A smear of angry violet over one eyebrow suggested a vicious right hook, and the tiny staple-shaped stipple just beneath it confirmed all suspicions. Before she could stop herself, Michiru took her hand away from the shell on the shelf and rubbed it against her lover's brow, just above the bruise. She studied it thoughtfully and with a bit of resignation in her marine gaze.

They were both fast healers and always had been, even in childhood. Michiru had fallen off a slide at a park at age six and broken her elbow—a week later, it had been good as new, offering up only the smallest of twinges when she swung a tennis racket. Her father had blamed his rusty English on misunderstanding the doctor's diagnosis—"It was just sprained," he insisted later—but Michiru knew better. Even now, creeping toward real adulthood, she remembered the sickening crackling sound the joint had made hitting the edge of the sandbox. She remembered how the arm had swung at her side like a snapped tree branch: how it had been hanging the wrong way, the fingers trembling twigs, turning her whole side into one huge screaming knot of pain.

A week later, following miserable summer nights of itching and clawing at a cast, she had played a double with a friend and won.

Haruka had mentioned similar events during her own tumultuous and detached upbringing: broken bones mending at a superhuman rate, cuts and bruises disappearing from flesh like blotches of invisible ink. The fact and the proof together left Michiru with a sour taste in her mouth and an unwelcome clench in her stomach, deep down low where it really mattered. They had been made for battle from the start, warriors from birth—there was no denying it.

Haruka's wounds from the previous day would be gone by sundown, Michiru estimated. Still, that didn't leave them the option of going to school, where such marks would be noticed, documented, and questioned. Mugen's administrative officials might even seek to contact Haruka's parents—or Michiru's, since the pair was inseparable both off the campus and within its carefully manicured borders. The fairer soldier's elder family were off somewhere in Europe, enjoying their money and the sights it brought them; Michiru assumed Haruka's possessed a similar agenda, given that the woman rarely spoke of them but had, on occasion, used an international calling card to exchange a few quick minutes of conversation.

The other woman's hair flowed in silken ribbons through her fingers, short and fine save for behind the ears, where it was long enough to reach the nape of Haruka's neck if Michiru pulled it a little. A hint of wickedness in her smile, she set to work on braiding what she could pull up, and soon a short stiff wick, finely woven, fell down a centimeter or so along the sleeping soldier's throat. Its end puffed out like a candle's flame, stubborn and angry somehow, and Michiru giggled. The sound bounced off the walls of the quiet room and she instantly slapped both hands over her mouth, watching Haruka with wide eyes.

When she refused again to stir, the paler woman rolled her eyes and determined that she, at least, was going to get up now. She rose, popped both knees, stretched, and looked ruefully down at a series of stippling dents that throbbed near her ribs. Bitemarks—but pleasantly gotten ones, at least. Leaning down, she rearranged the blankets over Haruka. Because she felt a small thread of wickedness wind off its spool in the dark corners of her heart, she brushed a thumb over the peak of her partner's breast. It was an arrogant little tweak made over the rasp of the sheets, and Haruka groaned and kicked out one long leg in what might have been drowsy protest. Giggling and breathless and just a little bit wild, Michiru fled the bedside.

She stole into the bathroom soundlessly. After peering at the dials in the shower, she turned them, got the right temperature, and stepped into the stall with the smallest of shivers. She had just taken one the night before, but it had not been a thorough thing—and besides, she thought smugly, there had been sweat and heat over flesh in the night, and she could use another soaping.

She reached for the ivory bar and, when her fingers found it queerly shaped, took a closer look at it. Scuds of willing suds were already making crescents under her fingernails, and she had to press a thumb down hard to keep the naughty little thing from shooting out of her grip like a foamy missile. Rivets had been cut into the sides of the soap bar, though, by what looked like small pipes, and it took Michiru a moment to understand that someone before her had grabbed the waxy oval and squeezed it. Squeezed it hard enough to make it change shape.

"Haruka," she sighed. The word echoed over the porcelain, soft and fond and faintly scolding. She tucked the bar of soap, however deformed, into a washcloth and rubbed it under the fingermarks melted away. Not even a twinge of guilt occurred to her when she used both the cloth and a coin-sized dollop of Haruka's shampoo, ensconced in a purple bottle, to scrub herself free of the night's last remnants. Her fingers skipped over the bitemarks. They were tender.

Once finished and standing, aglisten, in the midst of the silent stall once the water was off, she squeezed the excess water from her cascading fall of aquamarine hair. She had to snatch at a towel on a bar across the small room—Haruka could probably reach it with one careless swipe, but it took Michiru two or three calculated grabs before she seized fabric. She dabbed herself dry, wound the towel around her hair, and went shivering and naked back into the bedroom.

With a guarded glance back at her partner—still sleeping—Michiru pawed through the woman's open closet, came to a light blue button-up shirt, and took it carefully from its hanger. She pulled it on over her head without having to unhook even the first button. It bunched and pulled faintly at her breasts but swallowed her the rest of the way down, and she eyed herself in the mirror that was tacked to the back of the closet door.

She looked like she belonged to someone else, and she liked it.

Tightening the towel-twirl on her head with an expert tug, she left the bedroom and Haruka and went down the hall to the apartment's kitchen. There was a stacked refrigerator, a two-burner stove, a hotplate (perhaps to make up for the lack of other burners), a microwave that possessed a crooked handle, and a coffeepot. Michiru approached the first, took out of an eight-pocket carton of eggs she found on the first shelf, and then examined the last with a mouth that twisted at the corner. She was not fond of the taste of coffee, but liked the smell—and she was certain, for a reason she could not explain, that Haruka would want it. Executing a bit of guesswork, she rifled through the kitchen's helter-skelter lower cabinets until she found a skillet, and therein she cracked open four of the carton's eight eggs. Only when the membranous clear film around the yolks of the impending breakfast had begun to crisp white did she shift her attention to the cabinets surrounding the coffee pot.

Soon she had coffee brewing too, the thick, heavy aroma wafting through the kitchen and permeating the rest of the apartment's rooms. A faint clank from the door signaled the arrival of the paper, but Michiru made no move to retrieve it. Sometimes _The Asahi Shinbun _had stories that reported witness sightings of strange occurrences in local parks and public places: young women that lit up from the inside and wore short skirts, and went after lumbering monsters with oozing orifices and snapping, gnashing teeth. Sometimes, oh horrors, these stories made the front page. There were never pictures with them, or at least not yet, but Michiru knew that someday, a photographer might grow a pair of iron testicles and get close enough to score a candid shot. Her _henshin _stick provided a vague disguise, but not one that couldn't be broken with a digital camera and a macro lens. She was a famous violinist in Japan, a musically-inclined native daughter of whom the government and many social groups were extremely proud. Someone would recognize her. She had no desire to pick up the paper and find a picture of herself staring back at her.

The eggs crackled and simmered in the pan, but needed a few more minutes before Michiru could turn them. She sat down at a chair at the table—there were only two—and toyed absently with the salt and pepper shakers, shaped respectively like Fujiyama and Godzilla. With no task immediately at hand, she was free to think about whether there would be other mornings like this one. She was accustomed to waking alone in a silent and spacious apartment, the floorboards cold beneath her feet, the piano downstairs covered in a fine film of dust that looked like a shroud at sunrise. No one lived in the units on either side of her; if she was lucky, she might catch the distant gurgle of a toilet flushing in the next building over.

"This is nice," she whispered, even though she was certain her voice would not carry all the way down the hall to the bedroom. And it was. It was very nice. There were no lingering feelings of loneliness, and the crushing weight of the quiet at her own home was replaced here by the stutter of the coffee pot and the eggs in their skillet, cooking for two people. Smiling, Michiru tilted her head. A single blue curl escaped from the towel and fell down next to her ear, and she picked up the Godzilla pepper shaker and shook it.

Turning it on its end for no particular reason, she watched as the King of Monsters expelled a dark plume of spices from his ceramic mouth. She was almost finished making a black ring around the base of the crystalline Fujiyama when bronze arms encircled her, chair and all, and tipped her back slightly. She yelped. The pepper shaker fell from her fingers and landed on its side in the silted pile of its own making. One painted yellow eye glared in baleful accusation up at Michiru, who paid it no mind and turned her head up to Haruka, who was grinning at her.

"Look at that," she said. Her tone took on a chiding note and Michiru felt a rill of heat ripple down her spine because of it. "You're making a mess."

She was naked. Michiru leaned sideways in the chair and Haruka shifted too, so that the paler woman rested with her back not against wood, but bare flesh. "I got bored waiting for you to wake up," Michiru tossed back. She found herself admiring the line of Haruka's throat where it rose and met her jaw—in fact, she mused, she liked that too. She wanted to kiss the point where they met, throat and jaw, but Haruka's arms kept her firmly in place. She finished, "The mess is your fault."

Haruka's grin widened. The flash of her teeth was perfect and delightfully sinister, and she lifted Michiru from the chair, spun her, and settled her on the edge of the table. The smaller soldier felt her cheeks heat, and when Haruka leaned in to kiss her, she felt the warmth returned in the press of the other woman's brow and hands. They parted a while later with the sound of reluctant suction and a faint growl, though Michiru wasn't sure if it came from her chest or Haruka's. Hooking a hand that had wandered into a fist in her partner's hair, she whispered, "I gave you something no one else had ever touched, Haruka."

The taller woman paused. Her fingers lingered at the top button of Michiru's stolen shirt, quivering. Their eyes met and Michiru heard her say, "I know." Her gaze was glass-green and wonderful and electric, and she licked her lips and seemed to be struggling with something. With her free hand, Michiru cupped and caressed her, trying to be comforting, wanting to drag her closer. "Me too," came the admission at last, a chip of pride cast away.

Smiling then because they belonged to each other, something she had suspected all along but now knew for certain, Michiru wrapped her legs around Haruka's waist and brought them together. As her partner laughed, startled and pleased and hungry in a way that breakfast could not satisfy, the smaller soldier arched under Haruka's questing fingers and begged, "Go on."

The last button came undone and the shirt fell open some four minutes later. The eggs were burning. Neither woman noticed.

**Notes: **Whew, that was fun! But is it over? What do you think, readers? Shall I keep going or leave it here? As always, I adore critiques, comments, and fluffy hats. I hope you all enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

—Bainaku


	3. Chapter 3

**Warning: **This story involves two women together. If you're not fond of such things, you might not like this.

**Commentary: **This "chapter" is a little different from the others. It's not hard to see how, but I can envision some people not liking it as much as others. I'll only say this: hey, fighting monsters in miniskirts isn't always glamorous.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own the BSSM franchise. It belongs to the goddess Takeuchi Naoko.

* * *

**Sacrifices**

The engine purred and thunder rumbled in the distance, audible even over the white crackle of the radio between them. Haruka's hair whipped in a frenzied dance above eyes slanted tight against the breeze. The wiser of the two, Michiru had cloistered her own heavier locks beneath a hat hastily scrounged from beneath the passenger seat. Still, the brim of it bucked and quivered under the wind's questing fingers; it stayed in place only by virtue of a splayed hand. Soon she would either lose it or demand that her partner pull the convertible's soft top back over the car.

For now, they drove fast and hard along the ribboning rim of the manufactured hillside overlooking Tokyo Bay. The coming storm and its forceful gusts, made all the more insistent by the speed of the car and the anxiety of its driver, peeled the thick, sooty scent of battle from them as water washes away grime. There were some things of which the wind could not relieve the pair, though, and that reality kept lips sealed and gazes thrust straight ahead, where the road ran on like a black banner into the heights of the city proper.

Dark green grass stains on Michiru's knees served as smudged reminders of their terrible afternoon, marks driven deep by the _daimon _that had dragged her, screaming, across a soccer field not an hour prior. Her taller partner maintained a hunch in the driver's seat, one arm hooked halfway about her bleeding middle, her teeth clenched and beads of sweat as large as coins sliding in runnels down her taut face. Her breath came in quick, hoarse pants, and she steered with the tips of her fingers. Her other hand kept the clutch, the knuckles of it scraped raw. They seeped sienna fluid sluggishly down into the pale well of her wrist.

To the right of the car, the world fell away to the great expanse of the ocean. Michiru turned her head to look out at it, one palm flared over the hat to keep it from flying off. It hurt her too much to move her other arm, mottled and crooked in its sweater sleeve, and so she didn't try. Her mouth trembled and her eyes filled and she said nothing, content to watch the distant waves through the growing haze of her tears.

She thought Haruka would speak first, and she was right.

"It was close today," the blonde woman began. She tried to make her voice lighthearted, but she ended up sounding like a garbage truck hitting a tree instead. Blood and spit and sourness rattled in her throat. She gave a faint hitching cough, retched at the shooting pain in her abdomen, and veered slowly into the road's only other lane.

Michiru reached over and curled fingers that were bruised nearly black over the steering wheel. With a small tug, the car eased back into its intended avenue. Thunder rumbled again. The brim of the paler warrior's hat heaved and stuttered, and she encouraged Haruka quietly, "Pull over."

They exchanged a glance for perhaps the first time since leaving the scene of the battle. Haruka's eyes were full of pain, both physical and emotional. Michiru's, flat and almost gray in stress, brooked no room for argument. Sucking in a soft breath that made her chest clench, Haruka nodded. She guided her vehicle into the emergency lane and gravel kicked out under the tires in a low, grinding squeal. They came to a gradual stop and Haruka put the car in park, then flicked the keys with fingers trembling so badly that she almost jerked the engine to life again.

They sat together for a while thus. Haruka looked at the road's short shoulder in front of the car, quivering in agonized exhaustion and stress, and Michiru watched the ocean creep farther up the coastline, nibbling its way to high tide, until tears spilled down her cheeks and fell from her chin to puddle in little dark splotches on her skirt. She smelled rain on the breeze and blood pounded in her ears in time to the symphony of thunder as it came to a blurry crescendo over the horizon. She was waiting, though she couldn't be sure for what. And her arm hurt, oh it hurt, and it needed to be set, and Haruka was bleeding down her jeans and all over her seat and Michiru had never felt such worry, such dark desperate deepening worry, as was clawing through her soul now.

A few cars passed them. The driver of one felt brave enough to honk.

Michiru agreed at length, when the shameless, humiliating tears on her cheeks had dried into salt trails and her tongue felt heavy in her mouth, her lips curved into a wry, damning half-smile, "It was far too close." Cymbals of thunder clanged together in the west. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a buoy in the ocean so far below begin to flash, signaling the imminent approach of a high storm surge. To her friend she voiced the question, soft, "Are you all right?"

Haruka shifted a little. Agony twisted her features and smoothed them over again just as quickly. She drew her arm slowly away from her middle and looked at it, mesmerized by the sleeve now soaked in the drying crimson dredge of her own blood. The larger stain on her shirt was shaped vaguely like Antarctica, but she felt her gorge rise at the thought of it and deigned not to enact a close inspection.

Her eyes wandered next to Michiru's own torso and down her partner's broken arm, fractured collar, and shattered fingers. She felt her cheeks heat in shame and sorrow and self-rebuke. Had she taken a second more, Michiru's arm might have been torn asunder. A second less, Haruka mused with greater bitterness, and her lover might still be able to play the violin without screaming.

Win some, lose some.

"You," she managed, and faltered. It was hard to talk. She was almost certain the _daimon's _claws had lacerated a lung. The wound itched inside, a hellfire of pins and needles crawling behind her ribcage. It hurt even more, and she knew that if she coughed, she'd spray her dashboard with bits of gore and tissue. She took a deep, careful breath and tried not to squirm as tiny daggers razed ragged passages beneath her flesh.

"You drive," she finished in a wheeze, and looked sidelong at Michiru. The keys fell from her nerveless fingers into the console between them with a clatter.

Michiru took up the keys. They switched places as quickly as they were able—the paler woman got out and walked around the car, and Haruka slid over into the passenger seat with a whispery half-scream. A fresh gout of blood seeped between the fingers she kept stapled over her side.

Neither of them spoke the rest of the ride to Michiru's apartment. The new driver, her swollen, bruised hand only just flexible enough to manipulate the wheel, took residential roads as often as possible and sped through three lights, nearly clipping an angry businessman wielding a briefcase. The storm broke behind them in a roaring, raging downpour. When they pulled into the parking garage at last, the drum of rain above them sounded like a million heartbeats thudding at once. Haruka grappled with the door handle and found her fingers too slick to pry it up.

Wordless still, Michiru turned off the vehicle and got out first. She helped her partner to the nearby elevator, and their footsteps made faint patting sounds beneath the steady timpani of the storm outside. The slow, whumming lift to the tenth floor took ages and anxieties and Haruka waited with clenched teeth for the doors to open on expectant passengers at every level, but they were lucky this time, and they stepped out finally into a hallway both deserted and dark. Michiru was crying again, though in relief, when she slipped her keys into her lock and got the two of them inside without the neighbors noticing.

Hobbling away from Michiru's bracing shoulder, Haruka made for the bathroom. When the other woman attempted to follow, a sound of worry blossoming in her throat, she shook her head and whispered hoarsely, "No. The," and her words clinked wetly in her throat, "the car. The blood. If they—if anyone, if they see it…" She trailed off and looked into Michiru's sparse kitchen, where saucers from breakfast that seemed eons ago gleamed like watery eyes in the socket of the sink. Her vision swam and she was looking through stippled glass.

Blinking rapidly, she closed her eyes and tried to sort out what she wanted. It must have taken a while, because Michiru's fingers—her poor fingers!—touched her arm and folded there, hungry for reassurance of some kind. "Peroxide," the blonde urged at last. "Do you have any?"

"Yes."

"Take it—rags. Pour it on the seats. Dredge it off. Best—!" She paused to cough into a hastily cupped hand. It came away wet. Skin crawling with horror—just how bad was this anyway?—she finished, "Best we can do. Pull the cover over when… when you're done."

Michiru studied Haruka for a moment. The rain sobbed over the roof and pattered into the arch beneath her balcony, specking in tiny crystalline drops across the surface of the sliding door. She licked her lips. "What about you?"

Because Haruka could bleed to death. Michiru was not a medical student, nor was she even very good at much in the way of first aid when things went far past superficial cuts and bruises. However, she knew enough to recognize that Haruka had lost too much blood. She also knew that while her partner's wounds were likely far beyond her realm of expertise, applying pressure to a leaking liver or lung was something only Michiru could do if the fierce woman happened to lose consciousness. She did not at all relish the thought of leaving her unsupervised.

"I'll manage." Haruka did not look or sound—or feel, when it came to it—convinced of this, but she gave her lover a skewed smile and shrugged out of her grasp. "Low profile. That's more important. We can't have people in the building wuh-wondering about us." The smile wobbled, faded. "If they make any connections, we're in trouble. Don't worry too much, Michiru."

She paused to breathe, a terrible effort; her fingers made shooing motions that sent dimpled streaks of crimson across the breakfast bar. For a moment, both women looked at them, Haruka with cheeks snow-pale and Michiru in calculating quiet.

When her lover refused to ask for help, Michiru left Haruka at the bathroom threshold. She found the peroxide in the linen closet and liberated an old towel, slipping next into the bedroom she had only recently begun to share with another. She dropped her items on the bed and shrugged gingerly out of her day clothes, replacing them with lighter linens. Teeth clenched, she fished a sling free from her closet and eased her crippled arm into it, blinking away the tears that sprang into her eyes for the pain the limb caused her.

A hospital, she thought with bitterness, would be the best thing in this situation: to set her arm, to stitch up Haruka, to give them numbing medications and comfort and concern. Putting their lives on hold and at risk to fight for the future of humankind was hard enough: humankind's general and expansive oblivion to their daily toiling sacrifices only made their mission all the more miserable. Tugging the sling taut such that her crushed arm rested in a protected cradle against her ribs, the woman shook her head and groped again for her car-cleaning tools. A sympathetic ear was a luxury they were simply not allowed.

A few deep breaths later and the pain in her arm was only a dull throb. Casting aside her musings on the fairness—or lack of it—involved in being a soldier of justice, Michiru paused at the bathroom door, tightly shut now, on her way out of the apartment. She heard Haruka muttering curses under her breath and smiled. That, at least, was something close to normal. Before she could be caught lingering and scolded for it, she seized the keys, hurried to the elevator, and crept down into the parking garage once more, the peroxide and rags hidden in an opaque grocery bag.

Half an hour went by in the droning din of the rain. The concrete scraped Michiru's knees and worried the scrapes on one of them open, and she left a brown smear across the parking space's line as she knelt next to Haruka's car and mopped out what blood she could from the seats. It was tedious, tiresome work, and the initial fascination she had at the bubbling of the peroxide quickly faded in favor of the desire to simply get the job done. She was forced to pause several times, crouching with her ear tucked to the side mirror as people passed her by. None of them noticed, and she was glad—she didn't fancy explaining her task to anyone.

The bottle of peroxide came up empty at last, and the blood on the seats had dwindled down to yellow ochre stains that looked more like coffee than anything else. Michiru's torso was a nest of heat-needle pain. She pulled the top over the car, locked the vehicle completely, and collected her rags with quivering fingers, the other hand in the sling clenched so fiercely that her nails made half-moon stipples across her lifeline. She was alarmed to feel her whole body beset by a series of miniature tremors as she turned to wobble back toward the elevator, and when she thought about it, Michiru couldn't remember having ever been so tired. The grocery bag had skitted away at some point. She no longer cared.

She stopped just shy of Haruka's bumper, drawn up short by a prickling sensation of awareness between her shoulderblades. Turning, she found herself in full view of a tall woman standing at the base of the utility stairs. The fluorescent light fixture above said woman was not working, perhaps because of the storm—Michiru could make out no more of her face than the small purse of her mouth, which was now creased in a frown. She held what might have been a bag of vegetables, and her hair was long and richly dark. Michiru thought it was either black or close to it.

The warrior's mouth went dry. She tried to lick her lips anyway, with the result something like sandpaper scraping over broken glass. Standing in the dim dampness of the parking garage with an armful of bloody rags, sweaty, hair plastered to her skull, one knee oozing and the other still marked with a grass stain that would take days to scrub out—what could she say to explain it all away?

"Are you all right?" the woman asked. Her voice marked her as in her early twenties at most. It echoed. She made no move to step closer, but she did shift the bag in her arms a little.

Michiru's first reaction was to offer a sardonic smile, but the corner of that caved and she stapled her teeth viciously over her lips from the inside, desperate not to cry too. What kind of question was that—how was it fair? She wanted to ask if she _looked _all right. Taking a breath to calm her nerves, she let it out in a tiny, whispery laugh and said nothing.

The woman looked at her across the garage. Though Michiru could not see her eyes, her gaze felt speculative—and sympathetic, somehow. She wondered, with a kind of detached panic, what the stranger could be thinking. Abusive boyfriend? Husband? Recent mugging? Criminal covering a crime scene? Would she go to the police with her suspicions? Would she take down Haruka's license plate number and report dubious activity? There were only so many women with green hair around, and people talked, and Michiru herself was not an unknown figure no matter where she walked in Japan. It would take only one rumor to add extra hurdles to their quest to beat the Silence—or to ruin them entirely.

Thunder made a muffled pounding somewhere outside, and the woman at the stairs—who would see Michiru again some months later, though then in a helicopter—smiled.

"You'll be fine," she murmured. Those three simple words conveyed an instant comfort and relief that Michiru could not explain even later, and she thought about it many times in the following weeks. Before the soldier could begin to formulate a reply, the stranger pushed open the door to the stairs and disappeared through it, and the last thing Michiru saw of her was a slipping shadow and a flash of nori-green hair.

For a snatch of minutes following that encounter, Michiru leaned against the bumper of Haruka's car and gathered herself. When she felt that she could walk again without dropping the rags everywhere, she made haste to the elevator and, for the third time in so many minutes, skulked back down her own hallway to her apartment. Her progress went unmarked but for the disgruntled yapping of her hallmate's Pomeranian. She didn't worry about this, since it never shut up anyway.

The rags went the way of the kitchen sink. She left them sitting in a bowl of cold water next to the breakfast saucers, then took time to wincingly wash her hands free of drying blood. She turned off the tap and frowned when she realized that she could still hear the sound of the shower running.

She left the kitchen and went down the hall to rap her knuckles against the bathroom door. "Haruka?" she called. When that and her second query were met with no response, she thrust her uninjured shoulder into the crook of the door and forced it open.

Haruka sat in the middle of the tiled floor, her face pinched with exhaustion and pale too. Her lips were nearly blue. She was naked but for her underwear, and silent, agonized tears coursed down her face in trickling, fatigued rivulets. The gash on her side was patched but leaking a little still, and it wept sympathetic sanguine tears through its square hat of gauze. Michiru felt her stomach roll at the sight of a needle and its thick black thread resting nearby one of Haruka's clenched fists. The needle was stained red. What a hospital would have done with mercy Haruka had done with necessity and a sewing kit Michiru most often used for hemming skirts.

Michiru knelt at her lover's side and extended her good hand to one tearstained cheek. She cupped the hot sticky curve and ran her thumb over it; Haruka tried to jerk away only once, and her partner's cool palm followed her protest.

They rested for a while. Neither of them asked questions of the other, or gave answers, and it was fine that way.

"Help me?" Haruka asked when the storm was over and some semblance of color had returned to her cheeks.

"Yes."

Leaning on each other, painfully, they made it back to Michiru's bedroom. Haruka turned down the sheets simply because Michiru was unable to do it with only one arm. They crawled in, ginger; the green-haired woman had to be coaxed sweetly to touch the mattress at all, as she had not showered yet and she was loath to take the day's grime to bed.

"There's no hot water left." Haruka admitted this somewhat sheepishly. "It won't matter. We'll do laundry tomorrow."

Placated, Michiru notched herself to her lover's smoother side and tucked her face into the damp shock of sunflower hair. Haruka turned her head to kiss Michiru's cheek. They rested against one another, each thinking their own thoughts, each reliving their own regrets and worrying their own worries.

But they could do nothing separate for long, these two, and before they slept, they reached together into the small seam between them and twined hands.

* * *

**Notes: **Shall I continue? What do you think, readers? I adore critiques, comments, and suggestions, so please don't hesitate to leave any or all of the above! As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Furthermore, pending reactions to this addition to the story, I think I'll be more active on this site again. Send me mails if you like, and talk to me, or ask me questions, or whatever you like. I've been told I'm very friendly!


	4. Chapter 4

**Warning: **This story involves two women together. If you're not fond of such things, you might not like this.

**Commentary: **I started this fanfiction several years ago with the idea that I would write it such that all its events occurred prior to Haruka and Michiru meeting Usagi and company. However, as this continues to evolve, that may not remain the case. And speaking of continuous evolution: where is this going? Your guess is as good as mine, and your suggestions are more than welcome! I'll continue to write as long as both I and you continue to enjoy it. =)

**Disclaimer: **I do not own the BSSM franchise. It belongs to the goddess Takeuchi Naoko.

* * *

**The Promise**

Haruka awoke without fuss and pulled her mind piecemeal from the mire of sleep, her eyes fixed on the pearl-gray lattice of light spiderwebbed over the ceiling. Slowly, carefully, she looped her arms behind her head on the pillow and stretched. A telltale twinge pulsed through her abdomen, but that was all; her stomach gave a half-hearted, hungry grumble. At her side, Michiru mewled, kicked out—Haruka winced; her lover had sharp little heels—and turned over, content to sleep on.

The blonde eased from beneath the sheets and padded soundlessly into the bathroom just down the hall from Michiru's bedroom. She washed her face with a cloth that smelled of her lover's perfume and ferreted through the drawers, shameless, until she found a flavor of toothpaste she liked. As she scrubbed her teeth, she leaned forward and examined herself in the mirror: the somewhat hollow cheeks, the lines at the corners of her eyes, the hair that was getting a bit unkempt and shaggy in the front. She rifled her fingers through the last, frowned, and tipped her head down to get a better look, only to gag herself on her toothbrush. After an exasperated eyeroll at her own expense, she spat and rinsed, then neatened the bathroom as much as the past week of sharing it with another had trained her to do so.

Michiru only tolerated a mild amount of disorder anywhere in the apartment. Haruka, for instance, had learned just two days prior that a washcloth left crumpled rather than folded resulted in withheld kisses.

She knew it was in her best interest to live the way her partner liked it, and so she did.

Pausing, she cast a glance toward the shower, wondering if she should take one yet. Her eyes fell next to the patch of gauze on her side. It had been a little more than a week since she had taken the initiative to sew up the wound behind the gauze. Her fingers inched to it, ran over it thoughtfully. She'd managed to get an infection in the two days following the in-home surgery, and she remembered Michiru's worried face, and hot tea, and soup that her lover had made and fed to her spoonful by careful spoonful. Now there was nothing in the wound but the occasional thready ache. It hadn't bled in four days. Michiru's crushed arm, an injury gained at the same time as Haruka's, had been out of its sling for two. Perhaps…

Decisively, she peeled the gauze away and studied the wound site. There was a scar, of course, a low pink weal of flesh still puckered for its newness, but it was clean enough, and the stitching dots that had lingered the previous day were gone this morning. Spine stiff, she ran her thumb and forefinger in a ginger press over the mark, inspecting it, trying to determine its vulnerabilities. Though still a mite tender at its darkest spot, it was on the whole only another dented street sign on the wearing roadmap of her body.

Haruka smiled and threw the gauze away. While she had known gigs with less risk of gross disfigurement, the woman had to admit that being a soldier for justice carried with it a few extreme health benefits.

A few moments later, she leaned over Michiru's still form in the half-light of the bedroom and gave her partner both a gentle shake and a stage whisper. "I'm going for a run," she announced.

Turning her head in its nest of kinked seafoam curls, the other warrior cracked open a single eye and rolled the jaundiced orb to her partner. She noted Haruka's outfit: loose nylon shorts and a tank top, a sweatband already snapped into place beneath springy yellow forelocks. Closing her eye again, she huffed out a sigh and asked muzzily, "…time's it?"

Haruka checked. "Some change 'til six."

Her lover sunfished irritably and dragged Haruka's pillow over her shoulder and across her face. Her voice came out muffled, verging on petulant. "Why did you wake me?"

This made Haruka grin, and she dropped her head to Michiru's bare collar, nuzzling into the satin skin. "To see if you wanted to come with me," she answered, and ran her tongue into the divot at the base of her lover's throat—just to see how it tasted. It was quite fine.

Michiru shivered and peeked from beneath the pillow, incredulous. "With you?" she echoed. And then, "Stop that."

"With me, mm. And why?" Haruka added her teeth this time, nibbling her way up the well of Michiru's pale throat.

"Mmph," came the intelligent reply. Michiru squirmed, and Haruka chuckled when the woman folded one small palm firmly over her face and shoved her away. "It's too early," she whined. "And it tickles."

"You like it when it tickles."

"But not," Michiru rejoined, tucking her face back beneath the pillow, "before six in the morning." She made a show of yawning. "Other hours in the day. Plenty. Mine. S… Sleep." Her breathing was already deepening again.

Because she felt impish, Haruka delved beneath the sheets, found a buttock, and pinched it. Both of Michiru's eyes flew open immediately. With a shriek, she took up Haruka's pillow again and hit the woman with it, gaze narrowed into cattish, sulking slits. Bits of goose down flew out of the pillow's seams and rained down around them. "Go _away_," she growled between bursts of Haruka's soft laughter, flopping back onto the mattress.

"All right, all right," the other woman promised, but continued, "but why won't you come running with me? Don't say it's too early." To soothe her aggravated lover, she massaged the buttock in her possession until Michiru's eyelids began to droop, a sure sign that the pinch was a fading memory.

"I don't have a good sports bra," she allowed. Her legs shifted in a slow scissor motion beneath the sheets. "It hurts my breasts to run."

Haruka arched a brow such that it almost crept into her hair. "Are you saying I'm flat-chested?"

One of Michiru's hands wobbled up, found Haruka's shoulder, and slid in a sleepy caress down to the tall woman's heartbeat. Once she had it there, Michiru furled her fingers over a breast and gave it a gentle, evaluative squeeze. "Feels fine to me," she sighed at length, drowsy. Her eyes slid closed.

Haruka caught her hand as it fell. She kept it a moment, then brought it to her lips and held it there, her eyes fixed on her lover's sleeping face. When she felt she could, she tucked it back beneath the sheets and left Michiru to her dreaming.

Five minutes found her stretching and warming up as she walked through the parking garage. Once outdoors, she sucked in a deep breath, let it out between clenched teeth, and set off toward the ocean—of course Michiru lived near it—at a slow lope. Her legs pushed powerfully beneath her, and elbows swung out in even triangles. Her fingers seamed together to cut like blades at the air. As she climbed the small hill out of the complex that contained her partner's building and found her body willing to go farther, she abandoned all pretense of being careful and matched paces with the breeze eddying in against the rising dawn. A half-wild sound of almost-laughter fell from her lips and, for a few strides, she threw her arms wide as she ran.

Soon, though, the sound and sensation of her fleet footsteps seemed miles distant. Ensconced in the private sanctum of her thoughts, Haruka mused over the past week's events and what they meant for both her future and Michiru's.

Michiru had gone out only once since their fringe victory on the soccer field, and that had been to check the mail. Several times in their forced vacation they had felt the presence of nearby _daimon_, and each time they had also felt the individual monsters eventually fade from their awareness, dark waters running down an even darker drain. Neither the radio nor the massive television in Michiru's rarely-used office had reported civilian deaths in connection to the recent rash of "demon" sightings. As far as they knew, one woman who had apparently morphed into a vending machine with snack-dispensing arms had suffered a broken jaw at the hands of a terrified teenager with a baseball bat. That woman's mandible was the only noted casualty.

For her part, Haruka was glad the past few _daimon _had been of the weaker variety, requiring only the frantic efforts of normal humans to be subdued. However, it also lent fervor to the rat of worry gnawing at her insides. Suppose the news had missed one? What if there was a smarter _daimon _out there right now—one that knew how to murder, pillage, plunder, and hide? What if their downtime had put their faceless enemy too many steps ahead in the search for the talismans?

What if they were too late?

The thought made her grind her teeth. Haruka was anything if not dedicated to everything she took up in life: racing, running, fighting monsters. She hated feeling inadequate or faltering at any task to which her mind was firmly set, and this particular one, while certainly the most unique of any in her experience, was no exception.

Her typical approach to ultimate dedication was simple: she looked at her situation from all angles until she found the problem, and then she removed said problem. Clutch letting go too soon? Calibration: an easy fix. Too slow to hit the finish line first? Better shoes, more practice, endurance training. Also easy.

Letting monsters run free across Tokyo because one had put her out of commission by nearly ripping out her spleen? …bit of a conundrum, that.

Feet blurring over the concrete path, she turned a corner and came within sight of the beach, her vista marred only by a guardrail. The half-closed eye of the sun burned over the smooth mirrored expanse in a sleepy wink. Haruka gazed unblinkingly back at it, too lost in her thoughts to notice the breathtaking beauty of the moment.

When she employed her approach to ultimate dedication to the circumstance at hand, her problem came into immediate focus: Sailor Neptune. Sweat beading on her brow, Haruka frowned. She had never been a team player and still doubted her ability to function reliably as one now. She felt far more effective as a competitor—and maybe as a soldier—when she had only herself to blame for mistakes, and only her own skills and talents upon which to depend. She could alter her stride in a race, and change a timing belt in a Ferrari: sure, that was no problem.

She could not control the movements and actions of another sailor soldier. Michiru was capable, yes, of keeping up with her taller, stronger partner. At times she even exceeded Haruka's abilities. No one could get in a high kick like Neptune, much less throw a sharper punch to the unsuspecting kidney. Of the two of them, the aquamarine-haired warrior was definitely the better strategist, more likely to divine a plan of attack and have it succeed with implementation. However, they were of two different minds when it came to offensive placement. Michiru went for guerrilla-militia tactics, hitting at unexpected times only to fall back again to both regroup her resources and plan her next move. Haruka, by contrast, dove into battle with metaphorical guns blazing and gave her everything until either she or the enemy fell.

Despite their differences, they were good together to a fault: Haruka compromised and Michiru rose to the challenge. Haruka softened and Michiru gave way. The ocean leapt to the breeze and the wind fell to the waves. Then again, perfection in any dance could never last forever, even between such starcrossed partners, and last week Michiru had stepped wrong.

In taking advantage of an instant's lack of judgment on the smaller woman's part, their target _daimon_, a famous landscape architect gone homicidal garden hoe, had gotten close enough to snatch Michiru's elbow. It had almost torn off the soldier's arm in its effort to take the woman hostage. Haruka's fury and immediate quick action had saved both the limb and her partner's life. It had also given her a new scar, a twinge in every twist, and cost them a week's worth of talisman-searching.

Haruka's strides lengthened. She moved faster now than any other human on the planet could; her blood sang a ribald rhapsody in her ears and her small breasts heaved as the heart behind them throbbed in boundless joy. Birds in the trees fell quiet to watch her pass them by. Besides them, the soldier's performance had no audience.

Michiru was not a misfiring cylinder, a rusty rhythm, or an ill-mastered technique. She was an imperfection, yes, but to Haruka she was also everything. The seasalt glimmer of Michiru's hair gave Haruka reason to breathe; the brush of their fingers and flesh in the dark made the ballistics of their mission a bearable thing. Haruka wanted to fight—but for Michiru! To be with her, to feel her nearby in their low grey drive to school every morning, to feel the pulse of her laughter and the teasing whisper of her kisses, to—!

Oh, she was a flaw! But a fine, fine flaw.

Emotions ran deeper still. Haruka could not peel her problem, which was Michiru, away from her situation, which was fighting evil, simply because she could no longer imagine fighting alone. Her every footstep fell between those of another. Yellow went with green, and when the wind cried the ocean answered in the empathy of crashing waves.

She knew the essence of real fear only faintly. It had driven her across that soccer field a week ago, faster than a bullet and with all the ferocity of one too. Spilled fuel and explosions on racetracks gave her little pause. She crushed spiders without a second thought, and saved shrieking schoolgirls from cockroaches in similar fashion. Demons in the night only made her angry. But the idea of losing Michiru… of being alone again…

Fresh viridian agony lanced through the taut flesh above Haruka's hip. Hissing, she skipped one step, two, and performed a rather acrobatic half-split before correcting her stride. The ache gradually faded to a disgruntled throb, but the fact of the matter remained: Haruka was afraid of losing her partner.

It was a shameful, searing fear that stretched her fingers instinctively toward Michiru's when they were together, and sometimes when they weren't. It drove her to press her face to the other woman's curls to inhale her scent, to listen to her breathe, while the fairer soldier slept. It made her rhythm falter now, feet too heavy, knees popping, sweat a fine-dewed mist in her eyelashes.

With such a fear lurking in the chambers of her heart, could she really be the soldier the world needed? Could she really prevent the Silence?

As she rounded the final curve and came back within view of Michiru's building, Haruka blew beads of sweat from her upper lip and heard the glass-glitter tinkle of her lover's laughter in her head.

She smiled and decided then, deep within herself, that she did not want to live in a world where she fought and won against the enemy alone. She and Michiru would do it together—or they would do it not at all.

She passed into the shade of the parking garage again and slowed to a stuttering walk. Her shoes squeaked over the damp concrete. Reaching up, she swept her headband away and rubbed her brow with the back of her hand. She felt at peace with herself, and thirsty, and perspiration made her hair stand up in ragged spikes, and she grinned as she jogged up the stairs back to her lover's apartment. She took them two at a time.

The hall was dark when she came to it. She fit her key to the lock with a bitten lip and turned it as quietly as she was able. Stepping into the foyer, she ran her thumbs into the waistband of her shorts and made to strip them away. She'd gotten them halfway down her legs when she looked into the kitchen and spotted a drowsy-eyed Michiru staring back at her, frying pan in hand.

"I made crepes," she revealed, and gave the frying pan a jiggle. The thin pancake within produced an affirming sizzle-_ssshk_.

"Uh," Haruka replied, more concerned with the fact that Michiru had apparently made crepes naked.

Eyelids lowering to half-mast, the other woman sashayed slowly across the kitchen. The frying pan found its way back to its burner, and then Michiru's hands were on her partner's wrists, guiding them down until Haruka's fingers went nerveless and her shorts fell into an elastic puddle over her feet.

The taller woman licked her lips. Her cheeks burned like lamps and her heart pounded in her ears so loudly that she was certain Michiru could hear it. If she did, the aqua-haired soldier gave no sign. She stepped into her lover's lean shadow, breasts brushing ribs; her fingers slid from wrists to hips and splayed there, and Haruka's mouth went dry.

"Michiru," she managed, voice weak and wanting.

"Haruka," Michiru purred. Her eyes flashed and the blonde knew instantly that she'd fallen into a trap, but she was too late to avoid Michiru's hands as they swept back and seized the rounds of her vulnerable buttocks. Michiru squeezed them hard enough to illicit a yelp. "Go shower," she insisted. "You smell terrible." Releasing her lover, she turned and flounced back into the kitchen, smug, pinch penance fulfilled.

"I do not," Haruka denied sulkily. She gathered her shorts and stalked down the hall toward the bathroom, massaging one red cheek in an attempt to coax feeling back into it.

She emerged some ten minutes later, clean and dressed, ruffling a hand towel over her sprigging cowlicks. She found Michiru sitting at the table before plates already prepared—to her disappointment, the woman had taken it upon herself to pull on a robe.

"Looks good," she praised her lover, and set into the meal with a will. They ate together quietly, Haruka skimming the paper's headlines, Michiru gazing dreamily between her breakfast companion and a book she kept next to her plate.

When the crepes were nearly gone, the latter ventured, "Something was bothering you during your run."

"Mm," Haruka agreed. She took a sip of juice and tried not to look too surprised at Michiru's observation. "How did you know?"

Michiru shot her a glare softened by fondness. "The breezes outside the window got so wild that they almost pulled away the screen. They do the same thing when you take your math tests at Mugen."

Haruka flushed. "Aa."

After watching the embarrassed soldier move the remainder of her crepe around her plate for a moment, Michiru made a sound of low query and encouragement.

Her lover went on, "I was thinking about you. Us. How it—how we—"

She faltered, cheeks flaming again. Michiru smiled and hid the expression behind her cup, knowing silence and patience on her part would pay off in the end.

They did. "How we fit," Haruka finished in a rush. "How it works. Us. With the mission."

She looked up and Michiru gazed attentively back. When she saw that Haruka wanted her opinion, she cast her eyes down to the table between them and thought about it, watching her partner through the shutters of her lashes.

"This is hard for you," she murmured. She saw Haruka's fingers twitch and knew she was right. "Working together. Because of what we are. Because of _how _we are."

"But—"

"You're doing fine," she cut in, and gave her partner a stern frown. Haruka sat back in her chair, clearly pensive—but she motioned for Michiru to continue. "You are," the woman began again. "Really. But fine isn't enough for you, I know. I'm still trying to catch up to you sometimes. You're tolerant enough to wait. That's good." Her frown bloomed into a small, playful, contagious grin. "I don't think you'd wait for anyone else." Her tone dared Haruka to challenge the statement.

"No," Haruka agreed.

"Mm. And in some ways, you're playing catch up to me too. In things like this." Reaching across the table, Michiru took Haruka's hand in her own and rubbed her thumb over the strong knuckles. The taller woman's face went so crimson that the brick façade in the foyer nearby gave a jealous creak.

"Maybe," she acknowledged in a hinge-squeak whisper. It was hard to learn to love, yes.

But Michiru's smile of reward lit the room. "Yes. Learning from one another—we'll be doing that for a long time, won't we?" She twined their fingers; Haruka nodded. Michiru watched her face and Haruka caught her eyes, and they waited, thinking, until the smaller of the two determined, "Trust."

"What?"

"Trust," Michiru repeated. She squeezed Haruka's fingers. "We are still learning trust."

And it was true. They looked at each other and knew it to be so. Michiru trusted Haruka implicitly with her violin and with her body: the woman could make her smile, make her scream. Haruka trusted Michiru with her life and her heart: because Michiru had given the first purpose, and carefully cradled the last in hands that would never break it.

Still, they watched one another with anxiety during battle. Haruka had her fear, her one damning fear—she looked over the table and saw it reflected in Michiru's soft gaze.

"If this is going to work," Michiru said, "we have to agree on something."

"We have to promise," Haruka permitted, and fell quiet, unable to continue.

"We have to promise"—and here Michiru took it up for her—"to keep fighting, even if one of us falls." Turning in her chair, she eased it closer to Haruka's until they were hip to hip, and then she rested her head on her partner's shoulder and closed her eyes. Haruka felt the two of them trembling together.

"You might have died," she attempted, and roughness pushed into her throat, cutting off further words.

"You nearly did," Michiru reminded her. Haruka thought of the flash of a sewing needle and wished she hadn't eaten two of the crepes.

"We're fine now," she said when she thought she could keep her breakfast to herself.

"Yes." Michiru turned her head up and pressed her cheek to Haruka's in a nuzzle of pure relief. "But we've lost time—perhaps too much. Because we were too busy being concerned with one another." She worried her lower lip between her teeth. Her arms rose, paused in midair, hesitated. She guided them around the taller woman at last, and Haruka added her own, buckling Michiru close.

She regarded her partner in silence for a moment. "You're saying you don't want me to protect you," she stated at last.

"No. I'm saying that if I get caught again—if I'm pulled out of your sight. If I _fall_. Keep fighting." Michiru's hands clenched in the fabric of Haruka's shirt at the small of her back, tugged at it. "You have to trust me enough to know that I'll come back to you."

"And if you die?" Haruka asked this in a voice too harsh even for her own ears. Tears that felt like razors fell from the corners of her eyes, ran down her cheeks, dropped onto Michiru's robe.

Wonder of wonders, Michiru looked up and smiled at her. Smiled! "I know it's hard," she whispered, her own gaze glittering, "but you have to trust me never to leave you alone, Haruka."

Haruka stared at her lover, struck speechless. The tears came faster then, and fiercer, and eventually she closed both arms around Michiru in a clench and sobbed into the soft wave of her hair. The other woman held her, smoothed her brow. Through the eaves of the building the wind howled and shrieked, and undergarments on clotheslines rained down into the courtyard below, and the weathervane on the roof spun to strain toward the glimmer of the ocean in the distance.

"Can you promise?" Michiru asked when it was over.

"Can you?" came the sodden rejoinder.

Tucking her face to Haruka's, she lipped at her lover's mouth and murmured, "I can try—I think so."

"Then I can too." Haruka's mouth closed over hers, hard, insistent. Michiru pushed up into the embrace. The taller woman forced her fingers into the gap of her lover's robe and let them rove, and Michiru tore open her shirt with enough strength that one white button flew away and skittered beneath a cabinet. They would never find it again, though they did look for it later.

"Michiru!" Haruka gasped some time later, her voice thick with breathless fervor.

The mere sound of it thus drew roses on Michiru's cheeks. She looked up, lips parted, eyes wide. "Haruka?"

The woman lowered her head, ghosted her lips over the shell of Michiru's ear, and whispered in a rasp of black velvet, "You have flour in your hair."

"Ara!"

* * *

**Notes: **If you think I should continue this, please let me know. Per usual, I adore critiques, comments, and suggestions, so please don't hesitate to leave any or all of them. Send me mails if you like—talk to me, ask me questions. I've been told I'm very friendly!

As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.


	5. Interlude:  Faux Pas

**Commentary: **While every chapter of this fic so far can stand alone, they definitely make more sense when read in order. Make no mistake, this small interlude isn't meant to count as a chapter in its own right, but it's no exception to the rule. In short: if you read this before you read _The Promise_, you might miss out on some intended humor!

Also, a big thank you to everyone who reviews my writing. I really appreciate your input, your time, and especially your encouragement.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own the BSSM franchise. It belongs to the goddess Takeuchi Naoko.

* * *

**Interlude: Faux Pas **

The vintage buttercream Toyota pulled to a stop outside the department store. Its headlamps burned like suns; its engine purred, feline, until the car's driver cut it and got out. Passersby took notice of the tall, slender man: his straw-colored hair, his flashing gray-green eyes, how his hand lovingly traced the door handle and hood of the vehicle as he left it sitting in a pool of brilliance beneath a streetlight. A few made startled comments about his attire, because it was a school uniform. He looked too young to drive!

He went into the store. Twilight turned the sidewalk behind him into a teeming mass of evening commuters and school-aged adolescents just straggling out of cram school. The store's attendant, a young woman wearing neon lipstick, heralded his arrival with the cry of, "Welcome to our store!"

He took no notice of her but for an idle wave. His feet carried him immediately into the heart of the store, past display racks of silken skimpy fabrics and mannequins posed forever in the year's hottest swimwear. Pausing at a lingerie exhibit, he eyed an aqua set of sequin-studded garments with something like interest. Soon, though, he pressed on, eventually beginning a serious evaluation of the selection in the sportswear department.

The attendant watched him eagerly. He was quite attractive, after all, and most of the customers that came in daily were middle-aged women or schoolgirls on the hunt for sexy panties with which to tease their boyfriends. He made for a nice change of scenery—and maybe, she thought, a little more. After checking her hair in her compact and pinching her cheeks to pinken them up a little, she approached him.

He turned before she made it to his side. He held a packet of undershirts in one hand and a dangling sports bra in the other. The look he gave her was almost cold, but she asked him regardless, "Do you need any help, sir?"

His golden eyebrow twitched and a smile flitted across his lips—such pretty lips they were! …almost _too_ pretty, now that she had a good look. The smile, far from being pleasant, carried with it an air of sardonic disdain and amusement, as though he was enjoying some private joke at her expense. Nevertheless, he turned his gaze to the bra in his hand and looked at it a moment, then held it up to show it to her.

"I need another of these," he acknowledged.

"Ah," the attendant observed, inwardly disappointed. "For your girlfriend?"

"Something like that."

"I see." The attendant made an effort to be cheery despite her regret at the customer's evident non-single status. "Well, over here we have a fantastic brand—very durable and versatile. What sport is this for?"

"Jogging," the man allowed, leaning in to inspect the indicated bra. Giving the stretching fabric a small snap, he shook his head and continued, "No. This kind always chafes. Something else?" His fingers wandered to the tie on his uniform and pulled it loose.

"Of course," the attendant agreed, ruffled. How would he know what chafed? Selecting another article of clothing, she presented it to him with a vendor's flourish. "This brand is a different material, but a little more expensive—"

"That doesn't matter," he broke in, and smiled at her. This time it was a real smile, full of heat and sincerity and a kind of sweet distance that made her heart quiver in its lair behind her ribs.

She exhaled sharply, resisted the urge to fan her cheeks, and held up the garment of choice. Its empty cups bounced proudly. "Then this is the best! Excellent stitching, strong enough to last through multiple washes and still hold everything in place. But it still maintains the necessary give for a comfortable fit."

She passed it over. The man examined it thoroughly, turning it over thrice and again in hands covered in countless tiny scrapes and scars. After one last experimental tug on the garment, he produced a satisfied nod. "Great. I'll take one of these."

"Excellent! What size, sir?"

He looked at her in startled surprise. "Sorry?"

"Er. What size is your girlfriend, sir?" the attendant pursued.

The man straightened, blinking. His expression became thoughtful. His gaze darted between attendant and bra once, twice, and in the passage of a moment he lifted his hands, unbuttoned his jacket, and took it off. He passed the jacket over to her.

The attendant watched as the handsome woman folded her fingers beneath her own breasts, weighing them.

After a few seconds of calculative appraisal, she widened her fingers and showed the attendant her cupped hands. She said hopefully, "About this size?"

* * *

Later that evening, Michiru wound her way down the steps of the park amphitheater toward the car idling at the bottom. Crickets chirped in the bushes nearby, and the wind soughed and sighed through them too. The music she had finished playing only an hour before still pulsed in her head, and she smiled and hummed it under her breath until she came to the waiting vehicle's door. Leaning over, the driver opened it for her. She got in.

"Was it a good crowd?" Haruka asked. She took Michiru's violin case and turned, unbuckling her seatbelt, to carefully stow it in the back.

"Yes, a very good crowd." Michiru sighed and stretched, her fingers reaching heavenward. "Though it's always better when you're in it." She looked sideways at her partner, then blinked and leaned in closer. Her eyes narrowed. "Haruka! What happened to your cheek? It's so red!" And next, suspiciously, "It looks almost like a handprint."

"You must be imagining things," Haruka denied. Something rustled. She turned back around abruptly and dropped a plastic bag into Michiru's lap, her air that of a victorious knight. "Look! I bought you a present."

* * *

**Notes: **As stated in the commentary, this isn't meant to count as a chapter. This is a drabble, a joke, a delight, a… bit of fluff? Call it what you will! It's meant to be fun. =)

I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.


	6. Chapter 5

**Warning: **This story involves two women together. If you're not fond of such things, you might not like this.

**Commentary: **To hear the other half of the phone conversation taking place at the beginning of this chapter, look up and listen to _Haruka, Kawaki no Tsuisou _("Haruka: Recollection of Thirst"). Alex Glover provides a fairly accurate English translation of it; various video sites have the actual clip. Listening to it isn't necessary to understand what's going on here, but I won't deny that it will probably help. And hey, Haruka's voice is sexy!

While previous chapters could stand alone, this one might get a little wobbly without prior knowledge of the events in both _Sacrifices _and _The Promise_.

Lastly, to all of you who read, review, message, question, critique, and encourage me: thank you so much. Please continue to do so.

I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own the BSSM franchise. It belongs to the goddess Takeuchi Naoko.

* * *

_Fall away to the sound of my heart to your beat__  
Melancholy and cool__  
Kinda bittersweet  
Love on repeat_

—"In My Head," Anna Nalick

**Night Moves  
**

"How did you know it was me?" she demanded.

A rustle on the other end of the line, like clothing—or sheets. Haruka's response next, muffled, sarcastic, but too true.

"Well, what were you doing?"

The reply came in an incredulous sigh, and Michiru pressed her fingers to her mouth to hide her smile from eyes that could not see it anyway. Habit: it died hard.

"I want to go to Iwake," she admitted, and held the phone away from her ear a little lest Haruka should yell. She didn't, of course—but it never hurt to take precautions. Finally: "Yes, now."

And she did feel a stab of guilt, glancing over at the clock. It was a little past one in the morning. Her lover reminded her in a low half-groan that the beach would be there later, and Michiru nodded. The guilt lingered—but really, not too much.

"Is it so much of a bother?" she asked. She twirled the phone cord between her fingers and waited, head cocked.

Her lover told her shamelessly that yes indeed, it was a bother. Michiru laughed and said, "I'll go without you, then!" She would never do such a thing and they both knew it, but they also both knew this was a test. With a sigh and her usual pennant of flying colors, Haruka passed it. Michiru heard her climbing out of bed as she hung up the phone.

Smiling, she rose from her sheets herself. She dressed in the darkness of her room, pulling on a light skirt, a tunic, tying a scarf about her neck to match. She ruffled her fingers through her hair, thought about brushing it, and decided a simple once-over with a comb would do the trick. It was a warm night and Haruka would have the top down—why bother being fancy? Avoiding the mirror to keep her decision firm, she walked into the sitting room and paused before the balcony door.

The sky was heavy and moonless from her view, and the stars hung in low, precarious nets between wispy cloud buoys in the seas of the heavens. She stretched a hand up and out to them, as though she could touch them, and thought, _Our responsibility, all of you_.

She imagined she heard their laughter, voiceless but trusting, and felt reassured when she left the vista and slipped into her shoes by the door.

She moved next to the kitchen, where she made a thermos of coffee for her lover with hands white and whippish over the dim counters. She managed a sip from the thermos before wrinkling her nose and capping it—for Michiru, it was too bitter. Her shoes rustled over the floorboards as she packed a towel with the coffee in a satchel. She gathered her violin too from her studio off the foyer.

The two cases bumped together in her slow meander down the winding stairwells, a low song of night movements and stirring things. The flicker of the fluorescent lights at the landings sent rills of white across the teal scape of Michiru's hair. She crossed the lobby and smiled at the doorman, who was so fixated on the small television in his office that he neglected to register her presence. The deep evening air plucked sluggishly at her scarf as she eased outdoors; her skirt wafted in an easy to-fro banter against her knees. She knew Haruka was close.

Hiking up the skirt a little with her free hand, Michiru loped effortlessly along the paved path to the street. The towel bag bounced on her shoulder the whole way, and the handle of her violin case surged up into the crease of her palm.

She came to the ridge of the road just as Haruka's car pulled to a stop at the fore of her complex. Eyes hooded, the blonde driver leaned across the empty passenger seat to shift open the side door. Michiru settled into the cushion as easily as water runs over rock.

"You brought your violin?" Haruka asked in muzzy surprise. She watched as Michiru stowed the case of the instrument in question and the towel bag in the back. When the aquamarine-haired woman turned back around, she pressed, "Was it really necessary?" There was no bite to the query—only curiosity.

"Not at all," Michiru replied, and reached between them to fold her hand over Haruka's on the clutch. She ran her thumb into the divots between the other woman's knuckles, counted the ridges. She pressed her palm down to feel the small scar that circled the broader thumb. The engine idled.

"Mm," Haruka observed, and smiled at her. She shifted the clutch and the car hummed into motion again under the stacked dominoes of their lifelines. The wind buffeted them gently before they caught the dip of the road and went down the dark winding thread of the hillside spool, making for the ocean. Stars Michiru had pegged distant from her apartment loomed larger than life now, dimming dull and burning bright again like fireflies as the pair sped beneath them under the great glass dome of the sky, gaining speed.

Michiru looked over at her partner. Haruka seemed asleep at the wheel, her eyes nearly closed. Her lashes caught the starlight and gleamed for it. Her lips were curved in a slow, wry half-smile, the sort Michiru longed to touch and tender and kiss. "Haruka?" she ventured. She felt the sudden need for reassurance: to know this was truly all right, this journey out into the night when their other hours were already so full of demons and the threat of the world drowning in the dark. Her voice came out muted, hushed, nearly lost to the bowl of wind bent around the car.

The taller woman's fingers shifted beneath her own, a lazy shiver of coiled springs. "There it is," she replied. Her eyelids fluttered not a single bit, but they rounded the next curve effortlessly and Michiru caught her first real glimpse of the ocean.

Rippling faintly under the star-specked sky, the black mirrored surface was a thing Michiru had seen countless times before this one. It took her breath away even so: she strained forward in her seat against the safety belt, lips bitten from the inside, eyes wide and scoured of moisture by the breeze bleeding in over the windshield's seam. Her chest hitched and her hair streamed out behind her, and she tightened her hand over Haruka's, the call of a watery world long dead reverberating in the empty spaces of her soul.

The sea vanished in a second's span, replaced by the rolling hills of skyscraper-ambitioned suburbia. Its yearning keen faded in accordance, a searing plea cut off as though by a slamming door.

Michiru sat back in her seat again, squeezing her eyes shut. She felt both exhilarated and bereft. Her tongue darted out between her lips to wet them, and she heard Haruka say soothingly, "We're almost there."

Streetlights blipped by overhead, whitewashing the Toyota's shining hull a cold silver. As the car slowed, the smell of salt and sand swept around the two soldiers—Haruka grumbled sleepily and Michiru sighed, delighted. They pulled into Iwake's long, narrow parking lot and Haruka guided them to a halt at the base of a dune. Her knuckles bunched beneath Michiru's as she nudged the clutch as far forward as it would go. Leaning over a little, the smaller woman took the keys from the ignition and slipped them into the satchel.

The engine ticked, cooling. Crickets in the dunes that had paused at the unexpected post-midnight arrival started up their concert again in earnest; the gate to the beach creaked under the teeth of the breeze. "We're here," Haruka announced at length. She motioned to the desolate parking lot and clucked her tongue at her lover, a smirk hovering over her mouth. "Are you happy?"

While the question might have come off snide to anyone else, Michiru found the hidden tease in it without even the briefest consideration. "Aren't you?" she shot gently back.

Haruka opened her eyes a little more and blinked, owlish. She made a great show of looking around at the lot: its yawning emptiness, its scraggling seagrass riding up in obstinate clumps through spidering cracks in the pavement. Her eyes fell on her partner last of all, and the electric, musing intent in them stirred currents in Michiru best left between bedsheets.

She licked her lips again. Who could help it?

"I guess I am," Haruka sighed. She ran her free hand through her hair. The cowlicks in the back of it stood up like flags.

"You guess?" Michiru muttered archly. She snatched her hand from Haruka's over the dead clutch and swept from the car, her every rigid inch and fussy flounce suddenly engaged in a rigorous performance of snobbery. Leaving both bags in the back seat, she stalked up the sandy dock between the dunes and moved soundlessly down to the beach on the other side. She paused there to wait for her lover, who she could hear laughing. The sound pulsed in the night, and Michiru shivered. It was good, so good.

Smiling, she leaned against the dock's handrail and peeled off her shoes. Hooking them over two fingers, she swung them at her hip and went off across the cool sand, holding her skirt up with the other to keep it from tangling between her ankles. She stopped at the tideline—the beach was still a bit damp, and gravestone shells leaned and yawned in the packed sand. Expectant, she waited.

Haruka came to her. The taller woman put the satchel down first, opened it. She pulled the towel free from its confines before tucking the violin case protectively down next to the unopened coffee thermos, where the seabreeze could not pull and nibble at its hinges. Straightening, she snapped the towel and arched a brow at Michiru.

"Are you going to help me with this?" she asked.

They surveyed one another: Haruka grinning, Michiru so close that the rim of her teeth gleamed in the darkness. The dark-haired woman caught the opposite corners of the towel and together they arranged it the way they wanted.

Michiru took a seat first. She patted the spot next to her and Haruka, with a chuckle, kicked her shoes off and dropped to her partner's side. Tucking her knees to her chest, she rested her chin in their crook. Michiru's arms snaked possessively, gratefully about one of hers.

They watched the ocean roll, roil, and burble to itself for a while. The hiss of the waves filled them, washed over them, and in the darkness Michiru's cheek came to rest against the taller soldier's strong shoulder. Without trying, they kept each other warm.

"There's a concert next week," Michiru offered when she felt the words well up within her. They rose to her lips as blood does to a wound, and they tasted nearly as bitter. "I've been asked to play."

Haruka shifted and looked down at her. Her brows notched together. A frown ghosted over her mouth. "Your arm," she allowed. She slipped her own free of Michiru's clasp and furled her fingers over her partner's elbow. She squeezed, ginger. Michiru winced.

"My arm," the smaller woman agreed. The hitch in her voice was unmistakable.

Haruka took her fingers away, pressing them to the lined skin between her lower lip and chin. She looked at Michiru, thoughtful and sympathetic and distant somehow—Michiru looked back, resigned. She almost wanted to cry.

"Have you tried to play since—then?" Haruka asked. She voiced the question with difficulty.

"Nn," Michiru declined. Turning her gaze from her lover's face, she looked out over the ocean and shook her head.

It wasn't so much that her arm hurt—even though it did sometimes, and terribly. Enough to keep her up on muggier nights, the limb sometimes froze into an inflexible steel pole burning white-hot, relief worlds distant despite thrusts beneath pillows or cold water. Haruka had helped her massage it, had kissed her hard enough to distract her from it, had traced her lips over its taut, throbbing surface as though to chase the pain from it.

Michiru could handle that pain alone—though Haruka's efforts surely helped. She was no stranger to it, and her arm was only one of many places on her body that twinged in the night. She was a warrior: she expected damages, dealt with them daily.

She had neglected to play her violin since her injury on the soccer field for one reason only: she feared her arm's tremors might cripple the music, and that the wounded notes would no longer offer her any kind of solace or pleasure.

Lifting the hand of the formerly maimed arm, Michiru held it against the starlight and flexed her fingers. They moved as easily as fingers should. She twisted her wrist next. She felt the bones grind, but there was no pain and the shift went smoothly enough. Her elbow: a shooting lance of uncomfortable heat, bearable nonetheless.

Holding her breath, she rolled her shoulder. It popped audibly. The tendons screamed and needle-teeth bit into the side of her breast. She choked, hunched over; the arm fell crooked at her side and she dragged it into her lap, hiding it with her body.

She could feel Haruka's frown deepening—she had no need to look. There was something akin to horror in the other soldier's voice as she queried, "How often is it like that?"

Michiru shook her head again. "Not often." She tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice and failed. A laugh bubbled up in her throat. Lips trembling, she loosed it. It bounced out over the waves and volleyed back to them in a thousand softer voices, shards of a shattered mirror. "Sometimes days go by and it—it's like it never happened." She turned her face up to Haruka. Her partner regarded her with eyes slanted stormily, lips a thin grim line, her entirety still enough to constitute marble. The temptation to cower beneath the coolness of her gaze clutched at the base of Michiru's spine, but she resisted and hissed, "Stop that."

Haruka blinked, cocking her head. Her frown dug furrows in her features. "Stop what?"

Rubbing her shoulder in an effort to encourage the cramp to loosen, Michiru insisted, "Blaming yourself! I don't—you shouldn't either!"

"But—"

"No!" Michiru's voice went shrill and white. Her shoulder shuddered and locked, a dry, terrible clench. Gritting her teeth, she dug her nails as hard as she could into the small, smooth separation between her arm and collarbone. The muscles beneath shivered, immovable granite, and she made a weak sobbing sound and squeezed her eyes shut. "Haruka," she whispered, pleading.

Wordless, Haruka rocked back onto her heels and slipped to kneel behind Michiru. After plucking her lover's smaller fingers away, she closed her broad hands over the tight joint. She began to knead it. Her fingertips pushed mercilessly into the tortured flesh, seared down and into the seam of Michiru's trembling torso—around them, the seabreeze kicked up fine swirls of sand and sent them skyward.

Gradually she worked the cramp free. When it was mostly gone and she could move the limb again without the threat of screaming, Michiru sucked in a shivery breath and muttered, "It was my own stupid fault. I know it—so do you. You might like me too much to want to admit it aloud, but your heart knows it's true." She tapped a finger squarely between Haruka's breasts.

"That doesn't stop me from feeling sorry about it," Haruka groused. She unfolded her hands from about Michiru's shoulder—they hovered there, tense and tender, before she took them back entirely and steepled them together at her knees.

"Feeling sorry is fine." Michiru turned on the towel to better face her lover. Her expression mixed affection and somber demand. "Blaming yourself—that's not. Try not to, all right? It'll just make me angry." Her tone tipped toward teasing again, flippant.

Haruka smiled and made a dismissive motion with her churchtowered hands. "Heaven forbid!"

Flicking her eyes down lest her heart's warmth and sincerity spill into them and worry her partner more, Michiru busied herself a moment with the nearby satchel. She took the thermos from it and poured a capful of coffee for Haruka. Her arm gave a single warning pang as she passed it over, but that was all.

The other woman sipped at it gratefully, watching Michiru over the cap's steaming rim. When she had finished half of it, she offered the rest to her lover and asked, "What are you going to do about the concert?"

Heaving a sigh, Michiru took the cap. "I don't know yet," she admitted. She took a sip, shuddered, and downed the rest like a shot. "Terrible."

"Delicious," Haruka countered. She reclaimed the faux-cup and relieved her partner of the thermos. "Well," she hedged, "you have to try before anything else." She studied Michiru out of the corner of her eye, crouched in a half-private world behind a new capful of coffee. "Is that why you wanted to come here?"

Michiru nodded. "Mm." Her eyes crept skittishly to the satchel and the violin case resting therein. Worrying her lip between her teeth, she continued, "The waves will wash it away if it's bad. They always do."

Haruka bit the edge of the cap. Her teeth clacked over the plastic. "You're speaking in riddles," she accused her lover, and prodded her with a sandy toe.

Michiru smiled. The expression crinkled the corners of her eyes, but there was no heat in it: only resignation. "Do you think about the war when you race, Haruka?" she asked. "When you run? When you drive?"

Shifting to smooth the edge of the towel as the wind nibbled at it and the clouds over the midnight horizon clutched closer together, Haruka thought about it. "I guess I do. Well—starting out." She paused, groping for words. When she found them, she pressed, "I do those things to forget about it. It works."

"It's the same when I play," Michiru admitted. Sighing, she pulled her violin case from the satchel and flipped its latches. A tremor of heat slid over her heart at the familiar sight of the instrument within, lovingly polished and tended—an old friend, to be sure. "There's sanctuary in the music."

Haruka nodded, picturing in her mind's eye the comforting pulse of the track beneath her feet, or the scent of a dragstrip freshly tarred. She understood Michiru's concept of sanctuary easily. "Aa."

"But this…" Michiru lifted the bow in expert fingers. The whole arm shook and the bow went with it, an apple branch menaced by April's fickle winds. "This could ruin the music," she husked, and closed her eyes. "This could bring the battle where I don't want it—where I can't get _away_—"

She bit off the rest and dropped the bow back into the case. Haruka started to reach for her, stopped short, and drew back upon realizing that Michiru wasn't finished yet.

Gesturing to the open case and the silent violin it held, the smaller warrior muttered, "I know the music changes. Always. After every battle, no matter how small—every time I kill another _daimon_, or touch someone's heart crystal, the notes… Haruka, they cry a little more. But they still make me _feel _better." She chewed her lip almost hard enough to draw blood. "And if my arm—if my stupid _arm _makes it so I can't play the way I know I should, I'm scared it won't be enough. I'm scared the music won't work and—"

"Michiru," Haruka interrupted. Baring her teeth, ready to snarl, Michiru looked up. All the hair on her arms bristled indignantly. Her anger fell flat, however, under her lover's quiet, certain gaze. Thrusting the bow and the violin proper into the woman's startled hands, the taller of the pair commanded as she climbed to her feet, "Come on."

"I don't think I—"

"Then stop thinking." Haruka took Michiru by her narrow waist and hoisted her upright, leading her in a short skip from the edge of the towel. Once on the sand, she spun her partner, breasts to small shoulders, chin to aquamarine hair. Her arms fell in a loose, shameless curl about Michiru's torso—her hands feathered along the violinist's wrists, guiding them upright. "Just play," she insisted.

The bow tapped the violin's strings and made a low _ree _across them. Michiru flinched, stopped—the sound of the ocean pounded in her ears and fear filled her mouth like cotton. She shifted to put the instrument down and Haruka's arms stopped her, held her, pressed her.

They swayed, the wind and the waves.

"Ssh," Haruka whispered. Her eyelashes kissed over the fair flesh behind Michiru's ear. "Just play," she said again.

Michiru did. She brought the bow down hard—too hard, accidentally—and the strings screamed. Her heart sank.

But Haruka's hands—! They crept beneath her elbows, cupped them, brought them aloft. The bow fell to the strings again in a low, shivering sigh. The notes were like shells with the sea in them.

"Oh," Michiru breathed. She felt the soft press of Haruka's breasts at her back: the strength of her fingers, the surety of her smile. Closing her eyes, she tucked the prow of the violin beneath her chin, brought the bow up sharp, and leaned into her partner. She played.

It brought her joy.

When it was over, Haruka took the instrument from her trembling fingers and placed the pieces of it back in the case. Michiru ran her thumbs under her eyes to push away the tears there. They settled on the towel again, one before the other, the smaller of the pair drawn down by the fierce clutch she kept around Haruka's wrist. Above them, the clouds scuttled apart to reveal the moon's pale sickle, and in its light Michiru leaned up to kiss her lover.

"It worked, didn't it?" Haruka asked against the ember end of the embrace.

"Hmph," Michiru replied, and nipped the woman's lower lip in punishment. "You know it did."

Haruka chuckled. She stretched and hooked an arm around her partner, and they watched the waves crash, resting, content. Michiru slipped her fingers from Haruka's to card them through the woman's stubborn hair, a caress that went with the sibilant lullaby of the nearby sea. Pebbles chipped down the slopes of the dunes behind them; the salt-reeds rustled together. Her cheek pillowed within Michiru's soft seafoam curls, Haruka drowsed. The forgotten coffee thermos leaned forlornly in the dip of her ankle.

"Haruka," Michiru murmured. Her fingers paused in their absent tease; her heart hummed, quiet but quicksilver. She fell silent for several moments in the shadow of her sleeping lover, her eyes distant, her expression thoughtful. When she was sure, she smiled a small, secretive smile and finished, "I…"

She turned her lips to Haruka's throat for the last of it, too shy, too jealous to share even with the sea or the stars.


	7. Chapter 6

**Warning: **This story involves two women together. If you're not fond of such things, you might not like this. There's also some **strong **innuendo here, so proceed with caution, ye wee innocent underage readers. I'm not responsible for searing out your retinas—though I would be honored if you'd grant me the privilege.

**Q&A: **Several readers have asked me my thoughts on the physical intimacy of Haruka and Michiru's relationship: namely, why I chose to have them get involved before the battle in the Marine Cathedral. It's a good question, one I've given a lot of thought, and here's my answer: time.

Haruka met Michiru and woke as a soldier the summer prior to encountering Usagi and her friends, and we are never told how long Michiru fought on her own before Haruka got with the game. (Or if we _are _told, I've missed it and would welcome the knowledge.) That means they had at least a year together before the incidents that occurred in the Marine Cathedral. A year. A whole _year_. To fight monsters, take entrance exams, tear through social norms and stigmas, tie tourniquets, teach each other—and to become intimate.

Why did Haruka look so surprised when Michiru took her hand, then, in episode 110? My answer: wait for later chapters and you'll find out my thoughts on that one too.

I'm always up for a discussion about this topic, so if you want to hash it out with me, please feel free to IM or PM me.

**Commentary: **This chapter is about mistakes and making them, and relationships and how they stutter sometimes, and especially about understanding.

To all of you who read, review, message, question, critique, and encourage me: thank you so much. Please continue to do so.

As always, I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own the BSSM franchise. It belongs to the goddess Takeuchi Naoko.

* * *

_So many things I'd say if  
__Only I were able  
__But I just keep quiet and count the cars  
__That pass by_

—"King of Anything," Sara Bareilles

**Unspoken**

Haruka tensed. Sweat ran down her forehead in great shining droplets. Her tongue peeked from between her lips and wiggled. She bit it mercilessly. Her hands clenched into boulders over her thighs and her heart throbbed with such intensity that it sprang into her mouth, a whalloping copper gag. Tears of frustration stung the corners of her eyes. Her teeth clicked dangerously, and in her chest the beginnings of a terrible indignant scream clustered together, a thunderclap mere inches from its booming crescendo.

The test on the desk before her waited for the ready scritch of a pen. Its blank answer columns taunted her, mocked her, made her question her very worth as a person.

God, she hated math!

The girls in the seats nearest her tittered at her evident anxiety, glad to finally see the aloof sports car celebrity brought down a peg. Haruka shot a sassy brunette a glare sure to sear even the most obstinate soul into quivering jelly. She halfheartedly hoped the stupid chit would be the enemy's next target. If given the chance, Haruka intended to play a rousing game of basketball with her pure heart crystal.

Resigned, she looked back down at her test. She wracked her brain desperately for the faintest memory of a useful theorem or formula and came up short. She recalled no method of executable guesswork for the problems on the sheet—her chances of being able to blunder her way through them were both primitive and remote. Chewing the inside of her cheek, she thrust her face into her palm and heaved a silent, miserable sigh. Doom settled over her shoulders in a damning cape.

"Tenoh-san?" the teacher prodded her.

Haruka jerked upright and covered her paper with a crooked arm. "Yes?" she replied, eyes wide, cheeks flushed despite her best effort at sudden serenity.

The neat little man beamed at her, rocking in place on the heels of his blueblack shoes. He pressed his squat hands together—his fingernails looked better than Michiru's, Haruka thought in a snatch of amusement—and showed her the hook of his thumbs. "I know you're deeply engaged with that test," he allowed, "but I've just been informed of the extracurricular work you've been doing lately. It appears you're needed now to help finish it."

In a rare moment of breathtaking grace and dignity, Haruka offered, "Huh?"

"The music you've been composing with Kaioh-san for the school's upcoming concert, of course! A tribute to the teachers." He looked at her with glistening eyes and something like adoration, and she resisted the urge to squirm. "How—how _wonderful_!"

"Er," she managed.

"Time is of the essence. Kaioh-san says she's lost the notes you gave her—she was loath to disturb you," he conferred, leaning over Haruka such that the dark frames of his glasses filled her peripheral vision, "but I insisted." Snapping upright once more, he dropped a manicured hand onto the firm plane of her shoulder. "Please, go help your fellow composer."

"Uh," Haruka responded. She glanced down at the test beneath her elbow, dumbfounded, hardly daring to hope. The teacher's gaze followed her own. With all the deft prowess of a frog after a fly, he swept the test from her and gave it a cursory glance.

"It appears you were so intent on the first problem that you even forgot to pen your name," he observed. Haruka's cheeks flooded, but he took no notice. "Such dedication! See? No harm done! I'll just save this for you." He curved his fingers in the crook of her arm and hauled her upright. Her chair clattered backward; her classmates fired her looks of sheer incredulous envy. She barely had the foresight to grab her bag before the teacher escorted her to the door.

"I'm sorry for the inconvenience," the young woman waiting at the threshold murmured. She gazed demurely up to both the teacher and Haruka through her teal eyelashes, her hands clasped loosely at her waist, her posture hunched and submissive. She worried her full lower lip between perfect pearly teeth. "Are you sure this is all right, sir?" She was even flustered! She folded a hand over her pink-frosted cheek and shook her head, shamed. "I'm so clumsy and forgetful sometimes…"

Haruka, who had seen Michiru deliver a groin punch to a raving mannequin monster the previous evening and apply mascara without the smallest smear just a few hours ago, begged to differ. She disguised an abrupt snort as a cough.

The illusion worked well enough for the teacher. He laughed and said, "It's no trouble at all! Tenoh-san is one of my better students"—this wasn't true; Haruka felt a pang of mixed guilt and surprise that he would lie for her like that—"so making up the test later will be easy for her." He planted a hand confidently in the middle of Haruka's spine and nudged her forward. "Please take all the time you need. I'll inform her next instructor of her preoccupation."

Michiru gave the man a melting smile and made a bow to him. "I deeply appreciate your help."

Bobbing in return, he winked at Haruka and ordered, "Make it shine, Tenoh-san!" Thus satisfied, he closed the door behind Haruka and left the two students standing together in the hall.

"We should get to work," Michiru opined. She spun on a ready heel and stepped off down the corridor. Hitching up her bag, Haruka followed her.

They wound their way through Mugen's yawning halls and up its staircases too, Haruka a pace or two behind the smaller woman. She admired the cascade of Michiru's hair, the sway of her svelte hips—her eyes dipped surreptitiously once or twice to the prime globes of muscle beneath said hips. She could smell her perfume, the faint scent of yellow lilies. Though there was no need for it, she matched her steps to those of her partner, and Michiru's footfalls padded between her own long strides.

Michiru led them to the roof. She let Haruka push open the heavy door, and she uttered a laugh borne of delight as the breezes waiting for her partner tousled her hair and sent her skirt wafting upward. Tucking it down again, she dropped her satchel gently and turned to face Haruka. She folded her arms.

"Clumsy and forgetful, huh?" Haruka asked. A grin tugged the corners of her mouth.

Michiru sniffed and tossed her curls over one shoulder. "I thought it was an admirable performance." She stomped a foot. The heel clacked on the concrete. "Praise me."

Feathering her fingers over her heart, Haruka bent herself into the most respectful bow she could manage and acquiesced gravely, "It was truly magnificent."

She straightened to Michiru's soft giggles. Appeased, the other woman took a seat on the nearby stone dais and motioned for Haruka to join her. Ridding herself of her bag too, Haruka did.

Michiru smiled and nudged Haruka's shoulder with her own. She propped her elbows on her knees, leaning forward into the sunlight slanting in across the dais. Her chin fell into her waiting hands. "A test, mm?" She arched a delicate brow.

"A huge one." Haruka rifled her fingers through her hair and blew her shaggy bangs from her eyes. She needed a trim so badly, but who had time to tend long locks when they fought for the fate of the world every night? "I thought I'd studied enough."

Her partner rubbed her pale jawline, feigning consideration. "Aa. Is what we were doing these past few nights really called studying?"

"Oi," Haruka chided. "I'm talented—you've said so yourself. I can multitask."

"Yes," Michiru sighed dreamily. She tapped the tips of her fingers against her lips and granted Haruka a smile so soft and sincere that the other soldier felt her eartips steam. "Yes you can."

Haruka cleared her throat and turned to look fixedly out over the campus. Blood pounded in her temples in roadrunner rapidity. "A-anyway," she stammered, "I studied. I did! I just didn't remember any of it." Distracted by satin skin and curves and sweet sweat in the night's darker hours, she mused, who could blame her?

Michiru looped her arms behind her head and stretched the net her fingers made toward the coin of the sun above. Her legs stuck out in front of her, sinfully sculpted, pristinely pale. She hooked them at the ankles. "You had good reason." Her eyes slid closed and she threw her head back in dramatically artificial regret. "It's a pity, though, that you'll have to start focusing on certain subjects more than others."

Haruka leaned over the smaller student, lips curved in a devilish grin, and breathed against the fine silk of her throat, "Worried I won't have time for you?"

Michiru's breasts bounced beneath Haruka's chin as she laughed. "Of course! My heart pines at the mere thought of your inattention. I'm the jealous type, you know." And then, tender, "Haruka, are you trying to look down my blouse?"

Haruka, who had indeed been giving it her best shot, jerked back and neatened her tie dismissively. "Nn? I don't know what you're talking about."

Smiling, Michiru shook her head and leaned against her partner, a light brush of shoulders and elbows. The sun warmed the back of her neck and lit her hair in a shimmer-shine scape of Caribbean green. Around the pair the breezes cavorted—last season's dead leaves scuttled over the smooth surface of the dais. The chainlink fence separating the edge of the roof and its sister sky rattled faintly. From far below rose the sounds of midday traffic.

"Why did you come for me?" Haruka asked eventually. It almost pained her to stir the moment. She was comfortable, and Michiru smelled nice. "You've never done that before."

The corner of her mouth puckered in a small smirk, Michiru admitted, "You brained a custodian."

"What?" Haruka's voice went a little higher than she liked in her surprise.

"You did. The poor man!" Michiru chuckled. "We had to stop our badminton class because the wind suddenly picked up"—and here she gave Haruka a knowing look—"and he was nice enough to help us collect our bags. A roof tile got him right between the eyes."

Haruka groaned. She felt heat flare in her face: the capillaries there were getting a workout today!

"Don't worry." Michiru patted her knee. "He'll be fine." She paused. "In four to six weeks."

Thorny roses of shame blotched down Haruka's collar. She hung her head in silence.

Noting her partner's distress, Michiru frowned and backpedaled. "Maa! I'm teasing! It missed him." She amended in a mutter almost inaudible, "Mostly." Rubbing the flat of her palm gently up the taller woman's thigh to tweak the hip-seam of her pants, she went on, "The wind was so wild—I felt sorry for you, that's all. It was my fault you didn't study as much. I'm responsible, and I wanted to make you feel better. That's why I came."

_Sorry for you. _The incidental words lodged in Haruka's mind like an icepick—bit into her brain, tore at her pride, sent her into the hunkered corner of humiliation. She remembered too the defense her teacher had earlier provided for her without prodding—one of his best students, eh?—and felt very wretched, very unworthy, very wrong.

Was she really so incapable? Had she lapsed so much as a normal person that her peers felt obligated to make excuses for her?

It hurt too much and too abruptly to take. She lurched away from Michiru such that the smaller woman's hands were left touching air. She found her feet and turned to face her partner, her fists clenched, her mouth a tight, disbelieving line.

"What did you say?" she demanded softly. The question shook.

"I—" Michiru stopped, eyes wide. Her fingers shifted over nothing before she realized Haruka had gone. She drew her hands back into her lap. They furled there, anxious, bewildered. "What?" she tried again.

_Don't do this, _the more reasonable part of Haruka's mind screamed at her. _She didn't mean it that way and you know it. You're being stupid. Don't do this. You don't want it. Apologize. Sit back down. Don't do this. Don't—_

But no: the indignation was there already, crawling in a centipede skitter-scurry behind her eyes. "You felt… _sorry _for me?" Haruka went down the register to a low, pulsing growl. The dull hammer of irrational anger fell again and again on her heart's anvil, lighting up her world in running, reaming reds. Her molars scraped. Her knuckles creaked.

_Sorry for you, sorry for you, sorry for you…_

"Haruka," Michiru attempted. She stood up too, her expression that of one hopelessly lost and purely contrite. Her hand quested into the space between them, yearning for its partner.

"It wasn't necessary!" snarled the blonde soldier. What might have been a scream for another was a hoarse whisper for her, just as potent and provocative nonetheless. She sliced out a stiff arm, fingers splayed, teeth bared. The fury and frustration of months of nightly toil tightened her throat and filled her eyes with a hazed, hateful gleam. Sirens rang in her ears. "I was fine by myself!"

Michiru flinched. Her hand snapped away from Haruka and crept back into its cradle beneath a folded elbow. Though the wounded cast to her eyes was unmistakable, there was a new thing in them too: a cold, dangerous disregard, the creeping kind of resentment capable of rending hearts and wringing tears. Michiru was her lover, her partner, her friend. She accepted without protest Haruka's emotional constipation. She endured her weakness for fast cars. She patiently tolerated her uninhibited flirting with the remainder of Mugen's skirt-wearing population. Her expression now, however, suggested that she drew the line at bullshit.

"Oh?" she asked. "You were fine?" Incredulous derision touched her voice, tainted it, blood in water. "It's possible I misheard, but I think I remember the teacher saying you'd even forgotten to write your name." There was a warning in her words too, a certain caveat, a subtle suggestion that Haruka apologize while she still had the chance.

Riding the bitter endorphins of this rare fight with the one closest to her fickle heart, Haruka heard that warning and ignored it as tactfully as a blind horse. "I'm nobody's burden," she hissed.

Michiru made to speak again. Her lips parted—her eyes flashed, full of barbed electricity.

Desperate to have the last word, Haruka cut in sharply, "I don't need you."

She instantly regretted the terrible untruth.

Michiru choked on her breath, a small, helpless hitching sound, and her mouth fell open in a soft _O_. Struck speechless, she stared at her partner, all the fresh agony of a world coming apart visible in the color that ran from her face.

Haruka's anger broke and bled and seemed suddenly groundless. She grasped at the slivers of it for a moment, unable to remember where it had started or why, and then tears began to course down Michiru's cheeks and there was only guilt, guilt, guilt and the scent of yellow lilies in a wilting garden.

"Michiru—"

_I'm sorry._

Frantic, she tried to say it. Her lips moved; her throat worked. No sound emerged. Stymied, wordless, she reached for her partner. Michiru's fingers flexed in an echoing twitch: rose, stretched. Hope welled in Haruka, tidal and encompassing.

But Michiru pressed her hand to her own cheek and wiped at the wetness there. She drew it back again to study the smeared gleam on her palm, her lips bitten, her shoulders trembling. A scolding shadow crossed her eyes. Mouth twisted in revulsion, she flung her fingers such that her tears spattered across the dais. Her head dipped until Haruka could see only the pale crescent of her brow and the glitter of her eyelashes.

A moment crept past.

"Ah," Michiru began, and stopped to swallow hard. She looked up. Her smile, a bit bitter and wobbling still, was nevertheless beautifully bright. Beads of seasalt shine marked the corners of her eyes. "Are you finished?" she managed.

Ashamed, Haruka fled.

She slipped by Michiru, stumbled over her bag, kicked it away. She went through the utility door and down the stairs in a staggering run. Her feet scarcely touched the hall floorboards when she came to them. In her chest her heart lurched and screamed, swollen with remorse; her breath whistled hoarsely in her nostrils. She had a single rational thought: to minimize further damage by putting as much distance between herself and her partner as possible.

She made it across the school's lobby with only minor irritated clucking from the receptionist. Hastily tugging at the crook of her tie, she thrust her shoulder into the revolving door to the campus courtyard. Fallen leaves crunched underfoot as she paced across the latter, and she was nearly halfway to the student parking lot when someone reached from the breezeway to wrap long fingers about her wrist.

"I knew it," the brunette from her math class hissed. Her tone bordered on euphoric. "You're cutting school!"

_The sky—it's blue! _Haruka thought. She stated instead, "Let go." She gave her wrist a small, repulsed jiggle to add emphasis to the order, much like a cat shakes a dampened paw.

"Or what?" the brunette demanded. She flicked devilish, ferrety eyes across the courtyard. "Your precious violinist isn't here to back you up this time."

Painfully aware of the absence of the second shadow at her side, Haruka wondered briefly how hard it would be to break the other student's arm off at the wrist. She decided she preferred the convenience of a clean uniform. "Let go," she interjected once more.

"Aw," the brunette pouted in a sour simper, "what's wrong? Did your makeout session go _that _badly? You forgot how"—and here her voice cracked in its malicious delight—"to do _it_ too, didn't you?"

A sand-golden eyebrow twitched. From on high came the sound of stone scraping. The brunette looked up. A stray roof tile ploughed merrily into her narrow features, relieving her of three teeth and any later recollection of her encounter with her classmate.

Mere minutes later, Haruka's car roared out of the parking lot and into the streets of the city.

She threw her wrinkled tie into the side seat, so bereft now without its pale passenger. Her chin trembled. Her hair blew back in a horizon of short golden spires. The radio cranked out the first few words of an announcement before she slammed a fist into it, both turning it off and cracking the hard plastic faceplate. She gave several pedestrians—and more than a fair share of her fellow drivers—heart palpitations as she guided her vehicle in merciless circuits around the clustered district, her tires set to squeal, her clutch an accusatory exclamation point in her hand.

She hated herself.

She went to the only place besides Michiru's arms she had known comfort recently and stalked along its dunes. It was lonely there at Iwake, and some raw part of her liked it: a beach empty of all but the seabirds and umbrella skeletons. She paced. She marched. She tried running and her leaden feet tangled in one another, and she fell, and with her mouth full of sand she spat and choked and maybe she cried too. Because no one was there to see, she pounded her fists against the fine frailty of the earth until high tide soaked her trousers up to the knees.

The sun slid down in the sky behind her in a blazing bloom of orange, and when she looked over her shoulder at last and saw it, her fingers were raw and salt rimmed her nostrils. Rubbing her knuckles beneath the latter, she trudged away from the beach to her waiting car. Her drive back to her apartment was morose and strained and silent, and though the breezes tried to soothe her, she only smelled the sea in them.

Haruka pulled into her allotted parking space at her building nearly a half hour later. Keys clutched in gritty fingers, she crossed the lobby in shoes that squelched. They made muddled prints down the hall to her door, where she took them off and left them. She flipped the lock and went inside.

She found Michiru waiting for her on the couch.

They gazed at each other, the only sound between them the faint drip of the faucet in the kitchen. Haruka pushed the door closed. Her fingers felt worlds distant.

Michiru rose. She smoothed the creases of her uniform's skirt with one hand and used the other to put a half-empty cup of tea on the endtable, her every move that of one who has been waiting a while. In her eyes Haruka could see lingering pain and the flash of something else, something stronger, but then Michiru blinked it away and pointed off to the side.

"I brought your bag," she allowed.

Haruka's eyes never left Michiru. She said nothing. Her trousers dripped on the floorboards and her heart rolled in her chest like a hot stone, and she finally forced her mouth open to tell her partner how happy she was to see her, and to apologize, and to take back her terrible lie from the roof—and her voice failed for the second time in so many hours. The words bottlenecked in her throat. She struggled with them, with their weight and intensity. She lost.

Michiru waited, her head cocked, her face unreadable. Every second was a shard thrust into the marrow of the thing they shared. When it had bled enough, the dark-haired woman stepped across the room and folded her arms in a ginger pretzel over Haruka's hips. She avoided her partner's gaze, careful. Their toes brushed, Michiru's socked, Haruka's wet and sandy and curled.

The touch loosened Haruka's tongue a little. "Michiru—"

"Hush."

"I'm sor—"

"I know." Michiru's fingers tightened in Haruka's sand-stiff shirt. "Now hush."

Haruka clenched her hands into fists and stared down into Michiru's soft curls. She sawed her lip between her teeth, squeezed her eyes shut, and tried, tried, tried—

_I love you_.

Why was it so hard?

_I love you_.

She thought of Michiru: her laughter, her smile and kissing her, lips like damp silk, teeth worrying and tugging. Touching her, talented fingers and tongue ah and tending, teasing taunting torturing oh there oh God, yes there and tasting her, all the world fallen away and just the two of them twined together, the two of them, the two of them together together togeth—

"Michiru, I—"

"Haruka."

She blinked and found Michiru looking up at her, her heart in her eyes, and her hands slid to cup Haruka's salty cheeks and she said again,

"Hush. I know."


	8. Interlude:  Tricked

**Warning: **This story involves two women together. If you're not fond of such things, you might not like this. There's also some **very strong** innuendo here, so proceed with caution, ye wee innocent underage readers. I'm not responsible for searing out your retinas—though I would be honored if you'd grant me the privilege.

**Commentary: **Another interlude! The last chapter was a bit harsh and the next one coming is very heavy, so I thought I'd try to balance them with something soft and sweet. I owe a big thank you to **lostinhersong**, who was kind enough to beta this for me. I deeply appreciate it—thank you so much for taking the time to help me! =)

Lastly, to all of you who read, review, message, question, critique, and encourage me: thank you so much. Please continue to do so.

As always, I hope you all enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own the BSSM franchise. It belongs to the goddess Takeuchi Naoko.

* * *

_Ki wo tsukatte hanarete yuku yori jibun no kimochi kakusanai de kotoba ni dasou._

"Rather than hesitate too much and drift apart, we should voice our thoughts and not hide them from each other."

**Interlude: TRICKED**

Michiru braced her foot on the side of the pool and leaned over its surface as far as she was able, her leg clenched, her eyes closed. She dredged a chlorinated cascade from her curls with an expert twist of pale fingers. The aquamarine scape beneath her rippled, forlorn without her already; the lane rungs rattled wetly together, and in the filters her element voiced a morose _plip-plip_. She would be back soon, perhaps the next evening, but the small sculpted sea of the saltwater pool nevertheless mourned its momentary loss of her.

"Finished?" Haruka asked. She draped a towel over Michiru's shoulder and plucked the woman's swimsuit strap. "You didn't take very long tonight."

"Do I usually?" Michiru ventured, surprised. She rapped her knuckles lightly into the soft mat of hair just above her ear, trying to dislodge the water in it. It came out in a warm rush and she shivered, satisfied.

"Hours," Haruka lamented. She tacked on, "Sometimes."

"You never stop me." This was partially scolding—but mostly amused.

"Who am I to come between a woman and her waves?" Haruka flashed her partner a small smile and flicked her gaze toward the door next, where the evening's juvenile swim classes were congregating in chattering herds. She watched them a moment, her face unreadable, before she suggested, "We should go."

The abrupt comment drew Michiru's eyebrow aloft. "Afraid of the children, Haruka?"

"Nn." The taller soldier huffed. Eyes hooded, she confessed, "I'm tired."

Saving the world was a tiresome task, true enough, but Haruka usually kept her exhaustion to herself. Instantly contrite and inwardly startled at the rare admission, Michiru rubbed her damp shoulder against her partner's. "I see. Yes, let's go."

Haruka followed Michiru to the adjoining locker room, hands stuffed idly in slender pockets. She tossed the occasional glance backward as the other woman stripped, rinsed off, and redressed. Michiru dropped the towel in the gym's laundry after a final haphazard ruffle of it through clinging sodden locks.

"You didn't have to rush." Haruka frowned down at Michiru, who had progressed to struggling into her socks. "Your hair's still wet. It'll tangle. And you could get sick."

"Nonsense. Ah—come here. Yes." Folding her fingers over Haruka's arm, Michiru anchored herself against the woman and plucked at the damp sock twisted over her toes. She pursed her lips. "I think these are yours. They're huge."

"My feet aren't that big."

"Yes they are. And they're cold at night, did you know?"

Haruka smirked. She shrugged as Michiru rocked forward on the ball of her foot, rolling up the sock over her ankle so it would fit. "Mmhm, is that right?"

"It is. Stop wiggling! I'll fall."

"I'd catch you."

"It's slippery in here. I don't believe you."

"Really? Let's test it." Haruka jiggled her arm. Michiru laughed, took an exploratory step: her bare foot slid easily across the floor and Haruka swept the smaller woman against her, strong fingers stapled over a svelte hip. She arched her brows pointedly down at the other soldier, who muffled her giggles into the blonde's collar and, lashes demurely lowered, finished pulling on the sock.

"What, no apology?" Haruka demanded. "No fawning appreciation for my quick reflexes?" She shook her head, feigning disappointment. "Maybe next time I'll let you fall."

"Don't pout," Michiru murmured gently back. "You got what you wanted, didn't you?"

Haruka sighed in pretend put-upon, but made no move to take back her arm. It fell away only when Michiru stepped into her shoes and bent to get her bag.

"Ready?"

The taller woman nodded. "Mm." She shot a last look at Michiru's curls, gleaming a burnished blue under the locker room's fluorescents. "Are you sure that's okay?"

"What?" Michiru blinked. She reached up to tweak a wet tress. "These? Ah, it's fine. I'll take another shower later."

"That's not what I mean," her partner chided, but Michiru merely tugged her elbow and led her through the sports complex's maze of showers and sterile hallways. Their footsteps echoed—Haruka's squeaked, and Michiru's clicked. A trip through sliding doors took them together into the waning season's chilled air, and Michiru shivered beneath her thin sweater as a faint wind stirred the evening's stillness around them. The scudded stars overhead winked hazily.

"Wasn't it supposed to be warmer tonight?" she muttered, tightening her grip on her partner.

Haruka chuckled. "We should wait inside for your hair to dry."

"No." Michiru's jaw firmed stubbornly. "You're tired—I'm dressed."

"Which is a disappointment."

Michiru cut her friend a dryly appreciative glance. "Come on." Rubbing her fingers over the bridge of her nose, she looked disgustedly skyward at the scooped clouds climbing atop one another, mountains of heavenly drear. "Before it decides to rain too."

They reached Haruka's bike, carefully parked in a space beneath the building's overhang. Its driver passed Michiru a helmet, clipped her own into place, and mounted the machine. Her expectant pat of the curved swoop at her back teased a smile from Michiru, who arranged her bag and climbed into the available notch. Her arms dropped about Haruka's waist. She tucked her cheek into the shallow slope between her lover's shoulderblades, inhaled: she could smell storms there, and sunlight searing through them, and Haruka's heart throbbed in the midst of it all in a timpanic, thunderous rumble.

"Your place," she insisted before Haruka could start the motorcycle.

Surprised, the blonde blinked over her shoulder. "You don't want me to take you home first?"

"No, that's all right." Michiru hid her grin against the nearby spine. "You won't mind if I borrow a few more of your socks? These are a bit wet."

She felt Haruka laugh, a short sweet sound, and the bike revved to life under the low clasp of her legs. They drove home in a fine spray of near-spring drizzle. The hot-spots of traffic lights blurred over the visor of Michiru's helmet and through the water still beaded in her lashes. When they arrived at Haruka's building, the taller soldier helped her lover pull her helmet away and brushed her fingers through the clumped curls that sprang free from it.

"What did I tell you?" Haruka's eyes held a candle of knowing apology.

"Mm? Is it tangled?" Michiru leaned down to examine herself in one of the motorcycle's side mirrors. She could make out only the faint gray shape of her face in the parking garage's pale light, and the heavier shadow too of Haruka looming behind her.

"Especially here." Haruka hooked her finger through an aquamarine snarl to prove her point.

"Sst! Don't pull it, then. I'll get it later." Michiru slid off the bike. Shifting her gym bag over her arm, she walked with Haruka to the elevator. She thought absently that she liked the sound their steps made together.

"Does that mean you're going to break another of my combs in your hair?"

This brought Michiru directly back out of her reverie. "Hush!" she sulked. She jabbed the switch for the desired floor. "It's not my fault you buy the cheap ones."

"And it's not my fault your hair is stronger than steel wool when you let it dry like that, is it?"

"Hmph!" Michiru swung the gym bag into Haruka's hip, frowning. "Are you saying I can't use the comb?" The elevator dinged. They left it in a sweep of elbows, strides matched, one attemptedly haughty, the other a slow-motion lope.

"What if I did say that?"

Plucking the keys from Haruka's fingers, Michiru unlocked the apartment, flounced within, and tossed her things—said keys included—on the counter. She began to unbutton her sweater, damp from the drizzle outside. "If you did? Well…" She paused on the sweater's last clasp and tapped the pad of her thumb between her breasts, considering. "I'd say you'd have to drive to school alone in the morning, then."

"Is that so?" And suddenly Haruka was with her, close enough that her knees brushed Michiru's thighs. Chilled still from the motorcycle's bar-grips, her hands curved beneath her partner's: her rough fingers rasped against and folded through fabric. Intent, they tugged. The last button on the sweater fell open under their efforts. Her chin resting now in the damp curls of Michiru's temple, Haruka looked down the lean lines of her lover's body and sighed, "How terrible." And then: "Tip your head back, Michiru."

Michiru did.

Their mouths met in a clinging brush of wet heat. Haruka's teeth seared gently along the inside of Michiru's lower lip and she husked, "You can use the comb," and her fingers, oh her fingers, they were wicked and Michiru's bra fell down into the space between their shared-socked feet. Haruka filled her hands with what it lost. "If you'll stay with me," she whispered next, and she kissed Michiru again, harder this time, insistent, pleading, softening the ferocity of the embrace in the low scrub of her thumbs over fair flesh.

Surprised, Michiru tried to say _of course I will _and even _forever if you want_, but Haruka pinched the peak of a captured breast and she gasped, "Idiot!" instead. She made an arch up into that coarse touch, seized one of Haruka's hands in her own—desperate, she pulled at it. Haruka saw what she wanted and traced her fingers lower, kneading, caressing. She took them from her lover only to wet them between her lips. When she touched them to Michiru again they went below the dip of her navel, hot and slick and sweetly sinister.

"Aa—nn!" Michiru approved, and accused the other soldier in a breathless laugh, "_Ah_! Haruka! You're not tired at all, are you?"

Haruka smiled. Her fingers slid beneath the hem of her lover's skirt and it turned out she wasn't.


End file.
